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SYSTEMATIC
THEOLOaT.
BY
CHARLES HODGE, D.D.,
PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY.
YOL. II.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY.
LONDON AND EDINBURGH: T. NELSON AND SONS.
1872.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
Charles Scribner and Company,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
RnrEKsicG, cabibridoe;
■ TBBBOTTPED AND PRINTED BY
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
PAET II.
ANTHROPOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF MAX.
FAOB
§ 1. Scriptural Doctrine 3
§ 2. Anti- Scriptural Theories 4
Heathen Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. — Modern Doctrine
of Spontaneous Generation . ' 5
Theories of Development. — Lamarck — Vestiges of Creation. —
Darwin. — Remarks on the Darwinian Theory. — Atheistic. —
Mere Hypothesis 19
Theories of the Universe. — Darwin. — J. J. Murphy. — Owen. —
Common Doctrine. — Admitted Difficulties in the way of the
Darwinian Theory. — Sterility of Hybrids. — Geographical Dis-
tribution ........... 29
Pangenesis ••.......•• 32
§ 3. Antiquity of Man 33
Lake Dwellings. — Fossil Human Remains. — Human Bones found
with those of Extinct Animals. — Flint Instruments. — Races of
Men. — Ancient Monuments 39
CHAPTER H.
NATURE OF MAN.
§ 1. Scriptural Doctrine 42
Truths assumed in Scriptures. — Relation of the Soul and Body. —
Realistic Dualism 46
§ 2. Trichotomy 47
Anti-Scriptural. — Doubtful Passages 49
§ 3. Realism 51
Its General Character. — Generic Humanity. — Objections to Real-
ism. — From Consciousness. — Contrary to Scriptures. — Incon-
sistent with Doctrine of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ 60
§4. Another Form of the Realistic Theory 61
iv CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER m.
ORIGIN OF THE SOUL.
PAflB
§ 1. Theory of Preexistence 65
§ 2. Traducianism 68
§ 3. Creationism 70
Arguments from the Nature of the Soul 71
§ 4. Concluding Remarks 72
CHAPTER IV.
UNITY OK THE HUMAN KACB.
§ 1. Idea of Species 78
General Characteristics. — Definitions 79
§ 2. Evidences of the Identity of Species 82
Organic Structure. — Physiology. — Psychology . . . .85
§3. Application of these Criteria to Man 86
The Evidence Cumulative 88
§ 4. Philological and Moral Argument ....... 88
Brotherhood of Man 90
CHAPTER V.
ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
§ 1. Scriptural Doctrine 92
§ 2. Man created in the Image of God 96
§ 3. Original Righteousness 99
§ 4. Dominion over the Creatures 102
§ 5. Doctrine of Romanists 103
§ 6. Pelagian and Rationalistic Doctrine 106
Immanent Dispositions may have Moral Character. — General
Judgment of Men on this Point. — Argument fi'om Scriptiu-e, and
from the Faith of the Church. — The Character of Dispositions
depends on their Nature. — Objections considered. — Pelagians
teach that Man was created Mortal 115
CHAPTER VI.
COVENANT OF WORKS.
§ 1. God made a Covenant with Adam 117
§2. The Promise 118
§3. The Condition 119
§ 4. The Penalty 120
§5. The Parties 121
§ 6. The Perpetuity of the Covenant 122
CHAPTER Vn.
THE FALL.
Scriptural Account. — The Tree of Life. — The Tree of Knowledge. —
The Serpent. — The Temptation. — Effects of the First Sin . .123
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. v
CHAPTER YUI.
SIN.
PAOB
§ 1. Nature of the Question 130
§ 2. Philosophical Theories 132
Limitation of Being. — Leibnitz's Theory. — Antagonism. —
Schleiermacher's Theory. — The Sensuous Theory. — Selfish-
ness 144
Theological Theories.
§3. Doctrine of the Early Church 150
§ 4. Pelagian Theory 152
Arguments against it ........ , 155
§ 5. Augustine's Doctrine . . . . . . . . .157
Philosophical Element of his Doctrine. — Why he made Sin a
Negation. — The Moral Element of his Doctrine . . .159
§ 6. Doctrine of the Church of Rome 164
Diversity of Doctrine in the Latin Church. — Semi-Pelagians. —
Anselm. — Abelard. — Thomas Aquinas. — The Scotists . . 1 73
Tridentine Doctrine on Original Sin 1 74
The true Doctrine of the Church of Rome . . . . .177
§ 7. Protestant Doctrine of Sin 180
Sin a specific Evil. — Has relation to Law. — That Law the Law
of God. — Extent of the Law's Demands. — Sin not confined to
Acts of the Will. — Consists in want of Conformity to the Law
of God. — Includes Guilt and Pollution 188
§ 8. Effects of Adam's Sin on his Posterity 192
§ 9. Immediate Imputation 192
Statement of the Doctrine. — Ground of the Imputation of Adam's
Sin. — Adam the Federal Head of his Race. — The Representa-
tive Principle in the Scriptures. — This Principle involved in
other Doctrines. — Argument from Romans v. 12-21. — From
General Consent. — Objections 204
§ 10. Mediate Imputation 205
Origin of the Doctrine in the French Church . — Held by Theolo-
gians in other Churches. — Objections. — Theory of Propagation 214
§ 11. Pi-eexistence 214
§ 12. Realistic Theory .......... 216
President Edwards' Theory. — Proper Realistic Theory. — Objec-
tions 219
§ 13. Original Sin 227
Its Nature. — Proof of the Doctrine. — From the Universality of
Sin. — From the entire Sinfulness of Man. — From the incor-
rigible Nature of Sin. — From its early Manifestations. — Eva^
sions of the foregoing Ai'guments. — Declarations of Scripture.
— Argument from the necessity of Redemption. — From the
necessity of Regeneration. — From Infant Baptism. — From the
Universality of Death. — From the common Consent of Christians 249
Objections. — Men responsible only for Voluntary Acts. — Incon-
vi CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
PAOE
sistent ■with the justice of God. — Makes God the Author of Sin.
— Inconsistent with Free Agency 254
§ 14. Seat of Original Sin 254
The whole Soul its Seat 255
§ 15. Inability 257
Doctrine as stated in the Protestant Symbols. — The Nature of the
Sinner's Inability ......... 260
Inability not mere Disinclination. — Arises from the want of Spir-
itual Discernment. — Asserted only in reference to " Things of
the Spirit." — In what sense Natural. — In what sense Moral. —
Objections to the popular Distinction between Natural and Moral
Ability .265
Proof of the Doctrine 267
The Negative Argument. — Involved in the Doctrine of Original Sin.
— Argument from the Necessity of the Spirit's Influence. — From
Experience. — Objections. — Inconsistent with Moral Obligation.
— Destroys the Motives to Exertion. — Encourages Delay . 276
CHAPTER IX.
FREE AGENCY.
§ 1. Different Theories of the Will 280
Necessity. — Contingency. — Certainty ..... 284
§ 2. Definition of Terms 288
Will. — Motive. — Cause. — Liberty. — Liberty and Ability. — Self-
determination and Self-determination of the Will . . . 294
§ 3. Certainty consistent with Liberty ....... 295
Points of Agreement. — Arguments for the Doctrine of Certainty. —
From the Foreknowledge of God. — From Foreordination. —
From Providence. — From the Doctrines of Grace. — From Con-
sciousness. — From the Moi-al Character of Volitions. — From
the Rational Nature of Man. — From the Doctrine of Sufficient
Cause 306
PART III.
SOTERIOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
PLAN OF SALVATION.
§ 1. God has such a Plan 313
Importance of knowing it. — Means of knowing it . . . 315
§ 2. Supralapsarianism 316
§ 3. Infralapsarianism 319
§ 4. Hypothetical Redemption 321
Objections to that Scheme 323
§ 5. The Lutheran Doctrine as to the Plan of Salvation .... 324
§ 6. The Remonstrant Doctrine 327
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. vii
PAOE
§ 7. The Wesleyaa Doctrine 329
§ 8. The Augustinian Doctrine 331
Preliminary Remarks. — Statement of the Doctrine. — Proof of
the Doctrine 334
Argument from the Facts of Providence. — From the Facts of Scrip-
ture 339
The Relation of God to his Rational Creatures. — Man a Fallen
Race. — Work of the Spirit. — Election is to Holiness. — Gra-
tuitous Nature of Salvation. — Paul's Argument in the Ninth
Chapter of Romans. — Argument from Experience . . . 344
Express Declarations of Scripture. — The Words of Jesus . 346
§ 9. Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine 349
The Objections shown to bear against the Providence of God. —
Founded on our Ignorance. — Same Objections urged against the
Teachings of the Apostles 352
CHAPTER n.
COVENANT OF GRACE.
§ 1. The Plan of Salvation is a Covenant 354
§ 2. Different Views of the Nature of that Covenant .... 355
Pelagian View. — Remonstrant View. — Wesleyan Arminian View.
— Lutheran View. — Augustinian Doctrine .... 356
§ 3. Parties to the Covenant 357
Disthiction between the Covenant of Redemption and the Covenant
of Grace ... 358
§ 4. Covenant of Redemption 359
§ 5. Covenant of Grace 362
§ 6. Identity of the Covenant under all Dispensations .... 366
Promise of Eternal Life made before the Advent of Christ. — Christ
the Redeemer under all Dispensations. — Faith the Condition of
Salvation from the Beginning . . . • • • .371
§ 7. Different Dispensations . . . . . . . • .373
From Adam to Abraham. — Abraham to Moses. — Moses to Christ.
— The Gospel Dispensation . . . . • • .376
CHAPTER m.
THE PERSON OP CHRIST.
§ 1. Preliminary Remarks 378
§2. Scriptural Facts concerning the Person of Christ . ... . 380
He is truly Man. — He is truly God. — He is one Person . . 380
Proof of the Doctrine. — Proof of the several Points separately. —
From the current Representations of Scripture. — From particu-
lar Passages of Scripture. — St. John's Gospel i. 1-14 — 1 John i.
1_3. — Romans i. 2-5. — 1 Timothy iii. 16. — Philippians ii. 6-11.
— Hebrews ii. 14 . . . . . . • • • 386
§ 3. The Hypostatical Union 887
Two Natures in Christ. — INIeaning of the Word Nature. — Two
Natures united but not confounded. — The Attributes of one
viii CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
FAOB
Nature not transferred to the other. — The Union is a Personal
Union ........... 390
§ 4. Consequences of the Ilypostatical Union 392
Communion of Attributes. — The Acts of Christ. — The Man Christ
Jesus the Object of Worship. — Christ can sympathize with his
People. — The Incarnate Logos the Source of Life. — The Ex-
altation of the Human Nature of Christ 397
§5. EiToneous Doctrines on the Person of Christ. — Ebionites. — Gnos-
tics. — Apollinarian Doctrine. — Nestorianism. — Eutychianism.
— Monothelite Controversy 404
§ 6. Doctrine of the Reformed Churches 405
§ 7. Lutheran Doctrine 407
Different Views among the Lutherans. — Remarks on the Lutheran
Doctrine 418
§ 8. Later Forms of the Doctrine 418
Socinianism. — Swedenborg. — Dr. Isaac Watts. — Objections to
Dr. Watts' Theory 427
§9. Modern Forms of the Doctrine 428
Pantheistical Christology. — Theistical Christology. — The Doc-
trine of Kenosis. — Ebrard ....... 434
Gess 435
Remarks on the Doctrine of Kenosis ...... 437
Schleiermacher's Christology . . • . . . . .441
Objections to Schleiermacher's Theory. — Founded on Pantheisti-
cal Principles. — Involves Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trin-
ity. — False Anthropology. — Perverts the Plan of Salvation . 450
CHAPTER IV.
THE MEDIATORIAL WORK OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Christ the only Mediator 455
§ 2. Qualifications for the Work 456
§ 3. Threefold Office of Christ 459
CHAPTER V.
PROPHETIC OFFICE.
§ 1. Its Nature 462
§ 2. How Christ executes the Office of a Prophet 463
CHAPTER VL
PRIESTLY OFFICE.
§1. Christ is truly a Priest 464
§ 2. Christ is our only Priest 466
§3. Definition of Terms 468
Atonement. — Satisfaction. — Penalty. — Vicarious. — Guilt. — Re-
demption.— E.xpiation. — Propitiation 478
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. IX
a CHAPTER VH.
SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
PAGE
§ 1. Statement of the Doctrine 480
§ 2. The Sense in which the Work of Christ was a Satisfaction . . 482
§ 3. The Doctrine of the Scotists and Remonstrants .... 485
§ 4. Christ's Satisfaction rendered to Justice 489
§ 5. Christ's Work a Satisfaction to Law ...... 493
§ 6. Proof of the Doctrine as above stated 495
Argument from Christ's Priestly Office. — From the Sacrificial
Character of His Death. — Proof of the Expiatory Character of
the Sacrifices for Sin. — Argument from the Fifty-third Chapter
of Isaiah. — Passages in the New Testament in which Christ's
"Work is set forth as a Sacrifice, Romans iii. 25 ; Hebrews x. 10 ;
1 John ii. 2 ; 1 Peter ii. 24 512
Argument from the Nature of Redemption 516
Redemption from the Penalty of the Law. — From the Law itself.
— From the Power of Sin. — From the Power of Satan. — Final
Redemption from all Evil. — Argument from Related Doctrines 520
Argument from Religious Experience of Believers .... 523
§ 7. Objections 527
Philosophical Objections. — Objections drawn from the Feelings. —
Moral Objections. — Objections urged by the Modern German
Theologians .......... 532
Answer to the Theory of these Writers ..... 535
Popular Objections 539
CHAPTER Vin.
FOR WHOM DID CHRIST DIE?
§ 1. State of the Question 544
§2. Proof of the Augustinian Doctrine 546
1. From the Nature of the Covenant of Redemption. — 2. Election.
— 3. Express Declaration of the Scriptures. — 4. From the
Special Love of God. — 5. From the Believer's Union with
Christ. — 6. From the Litercession of Christ. — 7. Church Doc-
trine embraces all the Facts of the Case 553
Objections. — From the Universal Offer of the Gospel. — From cer-
tain Passages of Scripture 558
CHAPTER IX.
THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
§ 1. The Orthodox View 563
§ 2. Doctrine of some of the Early Fathers 564
§ 3. Moral Theory 566
Objections to that Theory 571
§4. Governmental Theory 573
Remonstrant Doctrine . . . . . . . . .575
X CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLmiE.
PAGE
Supcrnaturalists ........•• 576
Objections to Governmental Theory 578
§ 5. Mystical Theory 581
Early Mystics. — Mystics of the Time of the Reformation. — Osian-
der. — Schwenkfeld. — Oetinger. — The Modern Views . . 589
§ 6. Concluding Remarks 589
CHAPTER X.
INTERCESSION OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Christ our Intercessor 592
§2. Nature of his Intercession 593
§ 3. Its Objects ... 594
§ 4. The Intercession of Saints 594
CHAPTER XI.
KINGLY OFFICE OF CHRIST.
§ 1. The Church the Kingdom of God 596
§ 2. Christ truly a King 597
§ 3. Nature of the Kingdom of Christ 599
His Dominion over the Universe. — His Spiritual Kingdom. — His
Visible Kingdom. — Nature of that Kingdom . . . 604
§ 4. The Kingdom of Glory 608
CHAPTER XII.
THE HUMILIATION OP CHRIST.
§ 1. Includes his Incarnation . . . . . . . . .610
§ 2. His Being made under the Law 612
§ 3. His Sufferings and Death ......... 614
§ 4. His Enduring the Wrath of God 614
§ 5. His Death and Bm-ial ......... 615
The "Descensus ad Inferos." — The Lutheran and Modern Doc-
trines of the Humiliation of Christ ...... 621
CHAPTER Xm.
THE EXALTATION OF CHRIST.
§ 1. His Resurrection 626
§ 2. His Ascension 630
§ 3. His Session at the Right Hand of God 635
CHAPTER XIV.
VOCATION.
§ 1. Scriptural Usage of the Word 639
§ 2. External Call 641
§ 3. Common Grace .......... 654
Lutheran Doctrine. — Rationalistic Doctrine. . . . .657
Proof of the Inward Call of the Spirit as distinct from the Truth 660
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. xi
PA08
This Influence may be -without the Word. — The Work of the
Spirit distinct from Providential Efficiency • . . .665
An Influence of the Spirit Common to all Men. — Effects of Com-
mon Grace 670
§ 4. Efficacious Grace ......... 675
Why Efficacious. — Not simply ah eventu. — Not from its Congruity 677
The Augustinian Doctrine 680
Statement of the Doctrine. — The Main Principle involved . 682
It is the Almighty Power of God. — Hence 1. It is Mysterious and
Peculiar. 2. Distinct from Common Grace. 3. Distinct from
Moral Suasion. 4. Acts immediately. In what Sense Physical.
5. It is Irresistible. 6. The Soul is Passive in Regeneration.
7. Regeneration Instantaneous. 8. It is an Act of Sovereign
Grace • 688
§5. Proof of the Doctrine 689
1. Common Consent. 2. Analogy. 3. Ephesians iii. 17, 19.
4. General Teachings of Scripture. 5. Nature of Regeneration.
6. Argument from related Doctrines. 7. From Experience . 706
§ 6. Objections 709
§ 7. History of the Doctrine of Grace 710
Doctrine of the Early Church. — Pelagian Doctrine — Semi-Pe-
lagian. — Scholastic Period. — Synergistic Controversy. — Con-
troversies in the Reformed Church. — Hypothetical Universalism.
— Supernaturalism and Rationalism ... . 728
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY.
PART II.
ANTHROPOLOGY.
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY.
PART IL — ANTHROPOLOGY.
Having considered the doctrines which concern the nature of
God and his relation to the world, we come now to those which
concern man ; his origin, nature, primitive state, probation, and
apostasy ; which last subject includes the question as to the nature
of sin ; and the effects of Adam's first sin upon himself and upon
his posterity. These subjects constitute the department of Anthro-
pology.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF MAN.
§ 1. Scriptural Doctrine.
The Scriptural account of the origin of man is contained in Gen-
esis i. 26, 27, " And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created He him ; male and female created He them." And
Gen. ii. 7, " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man
became a living soul."
Two things are included in this account ; first that man's body
was formed by the immediate intervention of God. It did not
grow ; nor was it produced by any process of development. Sec-
ondly, the soul was derived from God. He breathed into man
"the breath of life," that is, that life which constituted him a man,
a living creature bearing the image of God.
Many have inferred from tliis language that the soul is an ema-
nation from the divine essence ; particula spiritus divini in cor-
pore inclusa. This idea was strenuously resisted by the Christian
4 PART 11. Cii. I. — ORIGIN OF MAN.
fathers, and rejected by the Church, as inconsistent with the na-
ture of God. It assumes that the divine essence is capable of
division ; that his essence can be communicated without his attri-
butes, and tliat it can be degraded as the souls of fallen men are
degraded. (See Delitzsch's " Biblical Psychology " in T. and T.
Clark's " Foreign Library," and Auberlen in Herzog's " Encyclo-
piidie," article " Geist der Menschen.")
§ 2. Anti- Scrij^tural Theories.
Heathen Doctrine of Spontaneous G-eneration.
The Scriptural doctrine is opposed to the doctrine held by many
of the ancients, that man is a spontaneous production of the earth.
Many of them claimed to be yr^ycvei?, amoxOov^^, terrigena. The
eartli was assumed to be pregnant with the germs of all living
organisms, which were quickened into life under favoui'able circum-
stances ; or it was regarded as instinct with a productive life to
which is to be referred the origin of all the plants and animals
living on its surface. To this primitive doctrine of antiquity, mod-
ern philosophy and science, in some of their forms, have returned.
Those who deny the existence of a personal God, distinct from the
world, must of course deny the doctrine of a creation ex nihilo and
consequently of the creation of man. The theological view as to
the origin of man, says Strauss, " rejects the standpoint of natural
philosophy and of science in general. These do not admit of the
immediate intervention of divine causation. God created man, not
as such, or, ' quatenus infinitus est, sed quatenus per elementa
nascentis telluris expllcatur.' This is the view which the Greek
and Roman philosophers, in a very crude form indeed, presented,
and against which the fathers of the Christian Church earnestly
contended, but which is now the unanimous judgment of natural
science as well as of philosophy." ^ To the objection that the eartli
no longer spontaneously produces men and irrational animals, it is
answered that many things happened formerly that do not happen
in the present state of the world. To the still more obvious ob-
jection tliat an infant man must have perished without a mother's
care, it is answered that the infant floated in the ocean of its birth,
enveloped in a covering, until it reached the development of a cliild
two years old ; or it is said that philosophy can only establish the
general fact as to the way in which the human race originated, but
cannot be required to explain all the details.
1 Dogmatih, vol. i. p. 680.
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 5
Modern Doctrine of Spontaneous Greneration.
Although Strauss greatly exaggerates when he says that men
of science in our day are unanimous in supporting the doctrine of
spontaneous generation, it is undoubtedly true that a large class of
naturalists, especially on the continent of Europe, are in favour
of that doctrine. Professor Huxley, in his discourse on the " Physi-
cal Basis of Life," lends to it the whole weight of his authority.
He does not indeed expressly teach that dead matter becomes
active without being subject to the influence of previous living
matter ; but his whole paper is designed to show that life is the
result of the peculiar arrangement of the molecules of matter.
His doctrine is that " the matter of life is composed of ordinary
matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are
aggregated."^ "If the properties of water," he says, "may be
properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its com-
ponent molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to
say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and
disposition of its molecules." ^ In his address before the British
Association, he savs that if he could look back far enouo;h into the
past he siiould expect to see " the evolution of living protoplasm
from not living matter." And although that address is devoted to
showing that spontaneous generation, or Abiogenesis, as it is called,
has never been proved, he says, " I must cai*efully guard myself
against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such thing
as Abiogenesis has ever taken place in the past or ever will take
place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics,
and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making pro-
digious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for
any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes
the properties we call ' vital,' may not some day be artificially
brought together." ^ All this supposes that life is the product of
physical causes ; that all that is requisite for its production is " to
bring together" the necessary conditions.
Mr. Mivart, while opposing Mr. Darwin's theory, not only
maintains that the doctrine of evolution is " far from any necessary
opposition to the most orthodox theology," but adds that " the
same may be said of spontaneous generation." * As chemists have
1 Lay Sermons and Addresses, London, 1870, p. 144.
2 Jbld. p. 151.
8 Athenceum, September 17, 1870, p. 376.
* Genesis of Species, by St. George Mivart, F. R. S. p. 266.
6 PART n. ch. I. — origin of man.
succeeded in producing urea, which is an animal product, he thinks
it not unreasonable that they may produce a fish.
But while there is a class of naturalists who maintain the doctrine
of spontaneous generation, the great body even of those who are
the most advanced admit that omne vivum ex vivo, so far as science
yet knows, is an established law of nature. To demonstrate this
is the object of Professor Huxley's important address just referred
to, delivered before the British Association in September, 1870.
Two hundred years ago, he tells us, it was commonly taken for
granted that the insects which made their appearance in decaying
animal and vegetable substances were spontaneously produced.
Redi, however, an Italian naturalist, about the middle of the seven-
teenth century, proved that if such decaying matter were protected
by a piece of gauze admitting the air but excluding flies, no such
insects made their appearance. " Thus, the hj'pothesis that living
matter always arises by the agency of preexisting living matter,
took definite shape ; and had henceforward a right to be con-
sidered and a claim to be refuted, in each particular case, before
the production of living matter in any other way could be admitted
by careful reasoners." ^ This conclusion has been more and more
definitely settled by all the investigations and experiments which
have been prosecuted from that day to this. It has been proved
that even the infusorial animalcules, which the most powerful micro-
scopes are necessary to detect, never make their appearance when
all preexisting living germs have been carefully excluded. These
experiments, prosecuted on the very verge of nonentity, having
for their subject-matter things so minute as to render it doubtful
whether they were anything or nothing, and still more uncertain
whether they were living or dead, are reviewed in chronological
order by Professor Huxley, and the conclusion to which they lead
fully established.^ This is confirmed by daily experience. Meat,
vegetables, and fruits are preserved to the extent of hundreds of
tons every year. " The matters to be preserved are well boiled
in a tin case provided with a small hole, and this hole is soldered
up when all the air in the case has been replaced by steam. By
this method they may be kept for years, without putrefying, fer-
menting, or getting mouldy. Now this is not because oxygen is
excluded, inasmuch as it is now proved that free oxygen is not
necessary for either fermentation or putrefaction. It is not because
1 AthsTusum, September 17, 1870, p. 374.
* What Dr. Charlton Bastian, who contested the conclusions of Professor Huxley, took to
be living organisms, turned out to be nothing but minute follicles of glass.
§ 2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 7
the tins are exhausted of air, for Vibriones and Bacteria live, as
Pasteur has shown, without air or free oxygen. It is not because
the boiled meats or vegetables are not putrescible or fermentable,
as those who have had the misfortune to be in a ship supplied with
unskilfully closed tins well know. What is it, therefore, but the
exclusion of germs ? I think the Abiogenists are bound to answer
this question before they ask us to consider new experiments of
precisely the same order." ^
But admitting that life is always derived from life, the question
still remains, Whether one kind of life may not give rise to life of a
different kind ? It was long supposed that parasites derived their
life from the plant or animal in which they live. And what is
more to the point, it is a matter of familiar experience " that mere
pressure on the skin will give rise to a corn " which seems to have
a life of its own ; and that tumours are often developed in the body
which acquire, as in the case of cancer, the power of multiplication
and reproduction. In the case of vaccination, also, a minute par-
ticle of matter is introduced under the skin. The result is a vesicle
distended with vaccine matter " in quantity a hundred or a thou-
sand-fold that which was originally inserted." Whence did it
come ? Professor Huxley tells us that it has been proved that " the
active element in the vaccine lymph is non-diffusible, and consists
of minute particles not exceeding a o o o o of an inch in diameter,
which are made visible in the lymph by the microscope. Similar
experiments have proved that two of the most destructive of epizo-
otic diseases, sheep-pox and glanders, are also dependent for their
existence and their propagation upon extremely small living solid
particles, to which the title of microzymes is applied." The ques-
tion, he says, arises whether these particles are the result of
Homogenesis, or of Xenogenesis, i. e., Are they produced by pi-e-
existing living particles of the same kind ? or, Are they a modifi-
cation of the tissues of the bodies in which they are found ? The
decision of this question has proved to be a matter of vast practical
importance. Some years since diseases attacked the grape-vine
and the silk-worm in France, which threatened to destroy two of
the most productive branches of industry in that country. The
direct loss to France from the silk-worm disease alone, in the course
of seventeen years, is estimated at two hundred and fifty millions
of dollars. It was discovered that these diseases of the vine and
worm, which were both infectious and contagious, were due to liv-
ing organisms, by which they were propagated and extended. It
- Huxley's Address, as reported in the London Aihenaum, September 17, 1870, p. 376.
8 PART II. Ch. I.— ORIGIN OF MAN.
became a matter of the last importance to determine whether these
living particles propagated themselves, or whether they were pro-
duced by the morbid action of the plant or animal. M. Pasteur,
the eminent naturalist, sent by the French government to investi-
gate the matter, after laborious research decided that they were
independent organisms propagating themselves and multiplying
with astonishing rapidity. " Guided by that theory, he has devised
a method of extirpating the disease, which has proved to be com-
pletely successful wherever it has been properly carried out." ^
Professor Huxley closes his address by saying that he had invited
his audience to follow him " in an attempt to trace the path which
has been followed by a scientific idea, in its slow progress from the
position of a probable hypothesis to that of an established law of
nature." Biogenesis, then, according to Huxley, is an established
law of nature.^
Professor Tyndall deals with this subject in his lecture delivered
in September, 1870, on " The Scientific Uses of the Imagination."
He says that the question concerning the origin of life is. Whether
it is due to a creative fiat, ' Let life be ? ' or to a process of evolu-
tion ? Was it potentially in matter from the beginning? or, Was
it inserted at a later period ? However the convictions here or
there may be influenced, he says, " the process must be slow
which commends the hypothesis of natural evolution to the public
mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis ?
Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that
not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life,
not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the
1 London Athenteum, September 17, 1870, p. 378. In view of the facts stated in the text.
Professor Huxlej- asks, " How can we over-estimate the value of ihat knowledge of the nature
of epidemic and epizootic diseases, and, consequently, of the means of checking or eradi-
cating them, the dawn of which has assuredly commenced ? Looking back no further than
ten years, it is possible to select three (1863, 1864, and 1869) in which the total number
of deaths from scarlet fever alone amounted to ninety thousand. That is the return of
killed, the maimed and disabled being left out of sight The facts which I have
placed before you must leave the least sanguine without a doubt that the nature and causes
of this scourge will one day be as well understood as those of the P«5brine (the silk-worm
disease) are now ; and that the long-suffered massacre of our innocents will come to an
end."
2 In quoting Professor Huxley as an authority on both sides of the question of spontane-
ous generation, no injustice is done that distinguished naturalist. He wi-hes to believe that
doctrine. His principles lead to that conclusion. But, as a question of scientific fact, he is
constrained fo admit that all the evidence is against it. He, therefore, does not believe it,
although he thinks it may be true. Hence Mr. Mivart says that Professors Huxley and
Tyndall, while they dissent from Dr. Bastian's conclusions in favour of spontaneous genera-
tion, ueverilu-less "agree with him in principle, though they limit the evolution of the
organic world from the inorganic to a very remote period of the woijil's history." Genesis of
Species, p. 266, note.
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 9
exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that
the human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all their
phenomena — were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere
statement of such a notion is more than a refutation. I do not
think that any holder of the evolution hypothesis would say that I
overstate it or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all
vagueness, and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the
notions by which it must stand or fall. Surely these notions rep-
resent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained .by any sane
mind." ^ Professor Tyndall, however, as well as Professor Hux-
ley, is on both sides of this question. Materialism, with its doctrine
of spontaneous generation, is thus monstrous and absurd, only on
tlie assumption that matter is matter. If you only spiritualize
matter until it becomes mind, the absurdity disappears. And so
do materialism, and spontaneous generation, and the whole array
of scientific doctrines. If matter becomes mind, mind is God, and
God is everything. Thus the monster Pantlieism swallows up sci-
ence and its votaries. We do not forget that the naturalist, after
spending his life in studying matter, comes to the conclusion that
*' matter is nothing," that the " Supreme Intelligence " is the
universe.'-^ Thus it is that those who overstep the limits of human
knowledge, or reject the control of primary truths, fall into the
abyss of outer darkness.
The way Professor Tyndall puts the matter is this : ^ " These
evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intel-
lectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning matter which
were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever
been presented to us in the rudest contrast ; the one as all-noble,
the other as all-vile." If instead of these perverted ideas of mat-
ter and spirit, we come " to regard them as equally worthy and
equally wonderful ; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite
faces of the same great mystery," as different elements, of " what
1 AthencBum, September 24. 1870, p. 409.
2 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, pp. 363-368. Mr. Wallace thinks that
" the highest fact of science, tlie nob'est truth of philosophy," may be found expressed in
the following words of an American poetess : —
" God of the Granite and the Rose !
Soul of the Sparrow and tlie Bee !
The mighty tide of Being flows
Through countless channels. Lord, from thee.
It leaps to life in grass and flowers.
Through every grade of being runs,
While from Creation's radiant towers
Its glory flames in Stars and Suns."
8 Athenceum, September 24, 1870, p. 409.
#
10 PART n. Cii. I. — ORIGIN OF MAN.
our mightiest spiritual teacher would call the Eternal Fact of the
Universe," then the case would be different. It would no longer
be absurd, as Professor Tyndall seems to think, for mind to be-
come matter or matter mind, or for the phenomena of the one to
be produced by the forces of the other. The real distinction, in
fact, between them would be done away. " Without this total
revolution," he says, " of the notions now prevalent, the evolution
hypothesis must stand condemned ; but in many profoundly thought-
ful minds such a revolution has already occurred." We have,
then, the judgment of Professor Tyndall, one of the highest au-
thorities in the scientific world, that if matter be what all the
world believes it to be, materialism, spontaneous generation, and.
evolution, or development, are absurdities " too monstrous to be
entertained by any sane mind."
We can cite his high authority as to another point. Suppose
we give up everything ; admit that there is no real distinction
between matter and mind ; that all the phenomena of the universe,
vital and mental included, may be referred to physical causes ;
that a free or spontaneous act is an absurdity ; that there can be
no intervention of a controlling mind or will in the affairs of men,
no personal existence of man after death, — suppose we thus give up
our morals and religion, all that ennobles man and dignifies his
existence, Avhat do we gain ? According to Professor Tyndall,
nothing.^ "The evolution hypothesis," he tells us, "does not
solve — it does not profess to solve — the ultimate mystery of this
universe. It leaves that mystery untouched. At bottom, it does
nothing more than ' transpose the conception of life's origin to
an indefinitely distant past.' Even granting the nebula and its
potential life, the question, ' Whence came they ? ' would still
remain to baffle and bewilder us." If we must admit the agency
of will, " caprice," as Professor Tyndall calls it, billions of ages in
the past, why should it be unphilosophical to admit it now ?
It is very evident, therefore, that the admission of the primary
truths of the reason — truths which, in point of fact, all men do
admit — truths which concern even our sense perceptions, and
involve the objective existence of the material world, necessitates
the admission of mind, of God, of providence, and of immortality.
Professor Tyndall being judge, materialism, spontaneous generation,
the evolution of life, thought, feeling, and conscience out of matter,
are absurdities " too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind,"
unless matter be spiritualized into mind, — and then everything is
God, and God is evervthino-.
1 The London Athenceum, September 24, 1870, pp. 407-409.
§ 2] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 11
Theories of Development.
Lamarck.
Lamarck, a distinguished French naturalist, was the first of
modern scientific men who adopted the theory that all vegetables
and animals living on the earth, including man, are developed from
certain original, simple germs. This doctrine was expounded in his
" Zoologie Philosophique," published in 1809. Lamarck admitted
the existence of God, to whom he referred the existence of the
matter of which the universe is composed. But God having cre-
ated matter with its properties, does nothing more. Life, organ-
isms, and mind are all the product of unintelligent matter and its
forces. All living matter is composed of cellular tissue^ consisting
of the aggregation of minute cells. These cells are not living in
themselves, but are quickened into life by some ethereal fluid per-
vading space, such as heat and electricity. Life, therefore, accord-
ing to this theory, originates in spontaneous generation.
Life, living cells or tissues, having thus originated, all the diver-
sified forms of the vegetable and animal kingdoms have been pro-
duced by the operation of natural causes; the higher, even the
highest, being formed from the lowest by a long-continued pro-
cess of development.
The principles of Lamarck's theory " are involved in the three
following propositions : —
" 1. That any considerable and permanent change in the circum-
stances in which a race of animals is placed, superinduces in them
a real change in their wants and requirements.
" 2. That this change in their wants necessitates new actions on
their part to satisfy those wants, and that finally new habits are
thus engendered.
" 3. That these new actions and habits necessitate a greater and
more frequent use of particular organs already existing, which thus
become strengthened and improved ; or the development of new
organs when new wants require them ; or the neglect of the use
of old organs, which may thus gradually decrease and finally dis-
appear." ^
Vestiges of Creation.
Some thirty years since a work appeared anonymously, entitled
" The Vestiges of Creation," in which the theory of Lamarck in
its essential features was reproduced. The writer agreed with his
1 William Hopkins, F. R. S. Eraser's Magazine, June, 1860, p. 751.
12 PART II. Ch. I. — origin OF MAN.
predecessor in admitting an original creation of matter ; in referring
the origin of life to physical causes ; and in deriving all the genera,
species, and varieties of plants and animals by a process of natural
development from a common source. These writers differ in the
way in which they carry out their common views and as to the
grounds which they urge in their support.
The author of the " Vestiges of Creation " assumes the truth
of the nebular hypothesis, and argues from analogy tliat as the
complicated and ordered systems of the heavenly bodies are the
result of physical laws acting on the original matter pervading
space, it is reasonable to infer that the different orders of plants
and animals have arisen in the same way. He refers to the grada-
tion observ^ed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms ; the simpler
everywhere preceding the more complex, and the unity of plan
being preserved throughout. He lays great stress also on the foetal
development of the higher orders of animals. The human foetus,
for example, assuming in succession the peculiarities of structure of
the reptile, of the fish, of the bird, and of man. This is supposed
to prove that man is only a more perfectly developed reptile ; and
that the orders of animals differ simply as to the stage they occupy
in this unfolding series of life. As the same larva of the bee can
be developed into a queen, a drone, or a worker, so the same living
cell can be developed into a reptile, a fish, a bird, or a man. There
are, however, the author admits, interruptions in the scale ; species
suddenlv appearing without due preparation. This he illustrates by
a reference to the calculating machine, which for a million of times
will produce numbers in regular series, and then for once produce
a number of a different order ; thus the law of species that like shall
beget like may hold good for an indefinite period, and then sud-
denly a new species be begotten. These theories and their authors
have fallen into utter disrepute among scientific men, and have no
other than a slight historical interest.
Darwin.
The new theory on this subject proposed by Mr. Charles Darwin,
has, for the time being, a stronger hold on the public mind. He
stands in the first rank of naturalists, and is on all sides respected
not only for his knowledge and his skill in observation and descrip-
tion, but for his frankness and fairness. His theory, however, is
substantially the same with those already mentioned, inasmuch as
he also accounts for the origin of all the varieties of plants and
animals by the gradual operation of natural causes. In his work
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 13
on the " Origin of Species " he says : " I believe that animals are
descended from at most only four or five progenitors ; and plants
from an equal or lesser number." On the same page,i however,
he goes much further, and says : " Analogy would lead me one
step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are
descended from some one prototype ; " and he adds that " all the
organic beings, which have ever lived on this earth, may be de-
scended from some one primordial form." ^ The point of most
importance in which Darwin differs from his predecessors is, that
he starts with life, they with dead matter. They undertake to
account for the origin of life by physical causes ; whereas he assumes
the existence of living cells or germs. He does not go into the
question of their origin. He assumes them to exist; which Avould
seem of necessity to involve the assumption of a Creator. The
second important point of difference between the theories in ques-
tion is, that those before mentioned account for the diversity of
species by the inward power of development, a vis a tergo as it
were, i. e., a struggle after improvement ; whereas Darwin refers
the origin of species mainly to the laws of nature operating ah extra^
killing off the weak or less perfect, and preserving the stronger
or more perfect. The third point of difference, so far as the
author of the " Vestiges of Creation " is conceimed, is that the
latter supposes new species to be formed suddenly; whereas Dar-
win holds that they arise by a slow process of very minute changes.
They all agree, however, in the main point that all the infinite
diversities and marvellous organisms of plants and animals, from
the lowest to the highest, are due to the operation of unintelligent
physical causes.
The Darwinian theory, therefore, includes the following princi-
ples : —
First, that like begets like ; or the law of heredity, according to
which throughout the vegetable and animal world, the offspring is
like the parent.
Second, the law of variation ; that is, that while in all that is
essential the offspring is like the parent, it always differs more or
less from its progenitor. These variations are sometimes deterio-
rations, sometimes indifferent, sometimes improvements ; that is,
such as enable the plant or animal more advantageously to exercise
its functions.
1 The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin, M. A., F. R. S., etc., fifth edition (tenth
thousand). London, 1869, p. 572.
2 Ibid. p. 573.
14 PART II. Ch. I.— origin OF MAN.
Third, that as phmts and animals increase in a geometrical ratio,
they tend to outrun enormously the means of support, and this of
necessity gives rise to a continued and universal struggle for life.
Fourth, in this struggle the fittest survive ; that is, those indi-
viduals which have an accidental variation of structure which
renders them superior to their fellows in the struggle for existence,
survive, and transmit that peculiarity to their offspring. This is
" natural selection ; " i. e., nature, without intelligence or purpose,
selects the individuals best adapted to continue and to improve the
race. It is by the operation of these few principles that in the
course of countless ages all the diversified forms of vegetables and
animals have been produced.
" It is interesting," says Darwin, " to contemplate a tangled
bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with bii'ds singing
on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms
crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elab-
orately constructed forms, so different from each other, and depend-
ent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense,
being Growth with Reproduction ; Inheritance which is almost
implied by reproduction ; Variability from the indirect and direct
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse ; a Ratio
of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a con-
sequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character
and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war
of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which
we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher
animals, directly follows." ^
Remarks on the Darwinian Theory/,
First, it shocks the common sense of unsophisticated men to be
told that the whale and the humming-bird, man and the mosquito,
ai'e derived from the same source. Not that the whale was devel-
oped out of the humming-bird, or man out of the musquito, but
that both are derived by a slow process of variations continued
through countless millions of years. Such is the theory with its
scientific feathers plucked off; No wonder that at its first promul-
gation it was received by thefscientific world, not only with surprise,
but also with indignation.^ The theory has, indeed, survived this
1 Or!i/in of Species, p. 579.
2 See Proceedings of the Literary ami Phihsophical Socieli/ of Liverpool during the Fifti-
eth Session, 1860-61. This volume contains a paper on Darwin's tiieory b}' tlie president
l6^^\r /
§2.J ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 15
attack. Its essential harmony with the spirit of the age, the real
learning^ of its author and advocates, have secured for it an influ-
ence which is widespread, and, for the time, imposing.
A second remark is that the theory in question cannot be true,
because it is founded on the assumption of an impossibility. It
assumes that matter does the work of mind. This is an impossi-
bility and an absurdity in the judgment of all men except material-
ists ; and materialists are, ever have been, and ever must be, a
mere handful among men, whether educated or uneducated. The
doctrine of Darwin is, that a primordial germ, with no inlierent
intelligence, develops, under purely natural influences, into all the
infinite variety of vegetable and animal organisms, with all their
complicated relations to each other and to the world around them.
He not only asserts that all this is due to natural causes ; and,
moreover, that the lower impulses of vegetable life pass, by insen-
sible gradations, into the instinct of animals and the higher intelli-
gence of man, but he argues against the intervention of mind any-
where in the process. God, says Lamarck, created matter ; God,
says Darwin, created the unintelligent living cell ; both say that,
after that first step, all else follows by natural law. without purpose
and without design. No man can believe this, who cannot also
believe that all the works of art, literature, and science in the world
are the products of carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.
The Atheistic Character of the Theory.
Thirdly, the system is thoroughly atheistic, and therefore cannot
possibly stand. God has revealed his existence and his government
of the world so clearly and so authoritatively, that any philosophi-
cal or scientific speculations inconsistent with those truths are like
cobwebs in the track of a tornado. They offer no sensible resist-
ance. The mere naturalist, the man devoted so exclusively to the
of the society, the Rev.i H. H. Higgins, in which he says that he considered the paper of
M. Agassiz, inserted in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, against Darwin, "to
be quite unworthy of so distinguished a naturalist " (p. 42). On a subsequent page he gives
a selection from Agassiz's disparaging remarits. The same volume contains a paper from
Dr. Collingwood in defence of Agas-iz and his criticism. In the review of the argument
he savs he will pass over Agassiz's "caustic remarks upon the confusion of ideas implied
in the general term, variability of specieg,'' and also "his categiirical contradictions of
manv of Darwin's fundamental statements ; but never was a tlieory more sorel}' beset than
is that of Darwin by the repeated asstuilts of such a giant in palaeontology as Agassiz.
Statement after statement, by which the whole theory hangs together, is assailed and
impugned, — stone after stone of the Darwinian structure trembles before the battering-ram
of the champion of species. Out of twelve such reiterated attacks, ten of which are purely
palseontological, and stand unchallenged, onlj' one has called for remarks, and th |t one,
perhaps, the least important" (p. 87). Agassiz is not a theologian; he opposes the theory
as a scientific man and on scientific grounds.
16 PART n. Ch. l — origin of man.
study of nature as to believe in nothing but natural causes, is not
able to understand the strength with which moral and religious
convictions take hold of the minds of men. These convictions,
however, are the strongest, the most ennobling, and the most
dangerous for any class of men to disregard or ignore.
In saying that this system is atheistic, it is not said that Mr.
Darwin is an atheist. He expressly acknowledges the existence
of God ; and seems to feel the necessity of his existence to account
for the origin of life. Nor is it meant that every one who adopts
the theory does it in an atheistic sense. It has already been
remarked that there is a theistic and an atheistic form of the nebu-
lar liypothesis as to the origin of the universe ; so there may be a
theistic interpretation of the Darwinian theory. Men who, as the
Duke of Argyle, carry the reign of law into everything, affirming
that even creation is by law, may hold, as he does, that God uses
everywhere and constantly physical laws, to produce not only the
ordinary operations of nature, but to give rise to things specifically
new, and therefore to new species in the vegetable and animal
worlds. Such species would thus be as truly due to the purpose
and power of God as though they had been created by a word.
Natural laws are said to be to God what the chisel and the brush
are to the artist. Then God is as much the author of species as
the sculptor or painter is the author of the product of his skill.
This is a theistic doctrine. That, however, is not Darwin's doc-
trine. His theory is that hundreds or thousands of millions of
years ago God called a living germ, or living germs, into existence,
and that since that time God has no more to do with the universe
than if He did not exist. This is atheism to all intents and pur-
poses, because it leaves the soul as entirely without God, without a
Father, Helper, or Ruler, as the doctrine of Epicurus or of Comte.
Darwin, moreover, obliterates all the evidences of the being of God
in the world. He refers to physical causes what all theists believe
to be due to the operations of the Divine mind. There is no more
effectual way of getting rid of a truth than by rejecting the proofs
on which it rests. Professor Huxley says that when he first read
Darwin's book he regarded it as the death-blow of teleology, ^. e., of
the doctrine of design and purpose in nature.^ Biichner, to whom
1 Criticismg on " The Origin of Species;" in Ms Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 330.
•' The teleological argument," he says, " runs thus: An organ or organism is precisely fitted to
perform a function or purpose ; therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function.
In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function,
or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived
to that end ; on the ground that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 17
the atheistical character of a book is a recommendation, says tliat
Darwin's " theory is the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be
imagined, and far more atheistic than that of his despised {verrn-
feneri) predecessor Lamarck, who admitted at least a general law
of progress and development ; whereas, according to Darwin, the
whole development is due to the gradual summation of innumerable
minute and accidental natural operations." ^
Mr. Darwin argues against any divine intervention in the course
of nature, and especially in the production of species. He says that
the time is coming when the doctrine of special creation, that is, the
doctrine that God made the plants and animals each after its kind,
will be regarded as " a curious illustration of the blindness of pre-
conceived opinion. These authors," he adds, " seem no more
startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary birth.
But do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's
history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to
flash into living tissues?" [This is precisely what Darwin pro-
fesses to believe happened at the beginning. If it happened once,
it is not absurd that it should happen often.] " Do they believe
that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were
produced ? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and
plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown ? And in the
case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of
nourishment from the mother's womb ? " ^
Mr. Wallace devotes the eighth chapter of his work. on " Natural
Selection " ^ to answering the objections urged by the Duke of
Argyle to the Darwinian theory. He says, " The point on which
the Duke lays most stress, is, that proofs of mind everywhere meet
us in nature, and are more especially manifest wherever we find
'contrivance' or 'beauty.' He maintains that this indicates the
constant supervision and direct interference of the Creator, and
cannot possibly be explained by the unassisted action of any combi-
efftct as a watch which shall keep time, is a contris'ing intelligence adapting the means
directh' to that end." Suppose, however, he goes on to say, it could be shown that the
watch was the product of a structure which kept time poorh'; and that of a structure which
was no watch at all, and that of a mere revolving barrel, then " the force of Paley's argu-
ment would be gone; " and it would be " demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well
adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by
unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that
end, by an intelligent agent." This is precisely what he understands Darwin to have
accomplished.
1 Seeks Vovlesvngen iiber die Darwin'sche Theorie, etc., by Ludwig Biichner, Zweite
Auflage, Leipzig, 1868, p. 125.
2 Origin of Species, p. 571.
^ Wallace cm Natural Selection, p. 264.
VOL. II. 2
18 PART II. Ch. L — origin OF MAN.
nation of laws. Now Mr. Darwin's work has for its main object,
to show, that all the phenomena of living things — all their won-
derful organs and complicated structures ; their infinite variety of
form, size, and colour ; their intricate and involved relations to each
other, — may have been produced by the action of a few general
laws of the simplest kind, — laws which are in most cases mere
statements of admitted facts." ^ In opposition to the doctrine that
God " applies general laws to produce effects which those laws are
not in themselves capable of producing," he says, " I believe, on
the contrary, that the universe is so constituted as to be self-regu-
lating ; that as long as it contains life, the forms under which that
life is manifested have an inherent power of adjustment to each
other and to surrounding nature ; and that this adjustment neces-
sarily leads to the greatest amount of variety and beauty and
enjoyment, because it does depend on general laws, and not on a
continual supervision and rearrangement of details." ^
Dr. Gray^ endeavours to vindicate Darwin's theory from the
charge of atheism. His arguments, howev^er, only go to prove that
the doctrine of development, or derivation of species, may be held
in a form consistent with theism. This no one denies. They do
not prove that Mr. Darwin presents it in that form. Dr. Gray
himself admits all that those who regard the Darwinian theory as
atheistic contend for.* He says, " The proposition that things and
events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried
out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism." Again,^ he says, " To
us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative
is a designed Cosmos If Mr. Darwin believes that the
events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we
1 Wallace on Naiui-al Selection, p. 265. When a man speaks of the "action of law," he
must mean by law a permanent, regularly acting force. Yet the laws to which Mr. Wallace
refers in the above passage are not forces, but simply rules according to which an agent
acts, or, a regHlar, established sequence of events. The laws intended are the law of multi-
plication in geometrical progression, the law of limited populations, the law of heredity, the
law of variation, the law of unceasing change of physical conditions upon the surftice of
the earth, the equilibrium or harmony of nature. There is no objection to these being
called laws. But there is the strongest objection to using the word law in different senses
in the same argument. If law here mean the rule according to which an agent (in this
case God) acts, the Duke of Argyle could agree with eveiy word Mr. Wallace says; if
taken in the sense intended by the writer, the passage teaches the direct reverse, namely,
that all the world is or contains is due to unintelligent physical forces.
2 Ibid, p 2G8. Mr. Russel Wallace says that he believes that all the wonders of animal
and vegetable organisms and life can be accounted for by unintelligent, physical laws. The
fact, however, is, as we have already seen, that he believes no such thing. He does not
believe that there is any such thing as matter or unintelligent forces; all force is mind
force; and the only power operative in the universe is the will of the Supreme Intelligence.
In the October number of the Atlantic Monthly for 1860.
* On page 409. 6 On page 416.
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 19
behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes
that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused
and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is
atheistic." No argnment, after what has been said above, can be
needed to show that Mr. Darwin does teach that natural causes
are " undirected," and that they act without design or reference
to an end. This is not only explicitly and repeatedly asserted, but
argued for, and the opposite view ridiculed and rejected. His book
was hailed as the death-blow of teleology.^ Darwin, therefore, does
teach precisely what Dr. Gray pronounces atheism. A man, it
seems, may believe in God, and yet teach atheism.
The anti-theistic and materialistic character of this theory is still
further shown by what Mr. Darwin says of our mental powers.
" In the distant future," he says, " I see open fields for far more
important researches. Psychology will be based on a new founda-
tion, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and
capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man
and his history." ^ Of this prediction he has himself attempted the
verification in his recent work on the " Descent of Man," in which
he endeavours to prove that man is a developed ape. The Bible
says : Man Avas created in the image of God.
It is a mere Hypothesis.
A fourth remark on this theory is that it is a 'mere hypothesis,
from its nature incapable of proof. It may take its place beside
the nebular hypothesis as an ingenious method of explaining many
of the phenomena of nature. We see around us, in the case of
domestic animals, numerous varieties produced by the operations
of natural causes. In the vegetable world this diversity is still
greater. Mr. Darwin's theory would account for all these facts.
It accounts, moreover, for the unity of plan on which all animals of
the same class or order are constructed ; for the undeveloped organs
found rudimentally in almost all classes of living creatures ; for the
different forms through which the embryo passes before it reaches
maturity. These and many other phenomena may be accounted
for on the assumption of the derivation of species. Admitting all
this and much more, this does not amount to a proof of the hypoth-
esis. These facts can be accounted for in other ways ; while there
are, as Darwin himself admits, many facts for which his theory will
1 Three articles in the July, August, and October numbers oH\\^ Atlantic Monthly for the
year 1860 were reprinted with the name of Dr. Asa Gray as their author.
2 Origin of Species, p. 577.
20 PART II. Ch. I — origin OF MAN.
not account. Let it be borne in mind what the theory is. It is
not that all the species of any extant genus of plants or animals
have been derived from a common stock; that all genera and
classes of orf^anized beings now living have been thus derived ; but
that all organisms from the earliest geological periods have, by a
process requiring some ^ve hundred million years, been derived
from one primordial germ.^ Nor is this all. It is not only that
material organisms have thus been derived by a process of grada-
tion, but also that instincts, mental and moral powers, have been
derived and attained by the same process. Nor is even this all.
We are called upon to believe that all this has been brought about
by the action of unintelligent physical causes. To our apprehen-
sion, there is nothing in the Hindu mythology and cosmology more
incredible than this.
It is hazarding little to say that such a hypothesis as this cannot
be proved. Indeed its advocates do not pretend to give proof. Mr.
Wallace, as we have seen, says, " Mr. Darwin's work has for its
main object, to show that all the phenomena of living things, — all
their wonderful organs and complicated structures, their infinite
variety of form, size, and colour, their intricate and involved rela-
tions to each other, — may have been produced by the action of a
few general laws of the simplest kind." Mai/ have been. There
is no pretence that this account of the origin of species can be dem-
onstrated. All that is claimed is that it is a possible solution.
Christians must be very timid to be frightened by a mere " mat/
have been.^''
Mr. Huxley says, " After much consideration, and with assuredly
no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that,
as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of
animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature,
1 Sir William Thompson, of Englanri, had objected to the theory that, according to his
calculations, the sun cannot have existed in a solid state longer than five hundred millions
of years. To this Mr. Wallace replies, that that period, he thinks long enough to satisfj'
the demands of the hypothesis. Mr. .J. .J. Jlurphj^ however, is of a contrary opinion. He
says that it is probable that it required at least five hundred years to produce a grej'hound —
Mr. Darwin's ideal of symmetry — out of the original wolf-like dog, and that certainh* it would
require more than a million times longer period to produce an elephant out of a Protozoon,
or even a tadpole. Besides, Sir William Thompson allows in fact only one. and not ^^ce,
hundred millions of years for the existence of our earth, in the Trnnsactions of Geological
Society of Glasgow, vol. iii., he says: "When, finally, we consider under-ground tempera-
ture, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion tjiat the existing state of things on the
earth, life on the earth, all geological history showing continuity of life, must be limited
within some such period of past lime as cm hundred million years." See Habit and Intelli-
gence, by J. J. Murphy, London, 1869, vol. i. p. 3i9.
§ 2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 21
has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or nat-
ural." 1
In " Fraser's Magazine " for June and July, 1860, are two
papers on the Darwinian theory, written by William Hopkins,
F. R. S. In the number for July it is said, " If we allow full weight
to all our author's arguments in his chapter on hybridism, we only
arrive at the conclusion that natural selection may possibly have
produced changes of organization, which may have superinduced
the sterility of species ; and that, therefore, the above proposition
may be true, though not a single positive fact be adduced in proof
of it. And it must be recollected that this is no proposition of
secondary importance — a mere turret, as it were, in our author's
theoretical fabric, — but the chief corner-stone which supports it.
We confess that all the respect which we entertain for the author
of these views, has inspired us with no corresponding feeling to-
wards this may he philosophy, which is content to substitute the
merely possible for the probable, and which, ignoring the responsi-
bility of any approximation to rigorous demonstration in the
establishment of its own theories, complacently assumes them to
be right till they are rigorously proved to be wrong. When New-
ton, in former times, put forth his theory of gravitation he did not
call on philosophers to believe it, or else to show that it was wrong,
but felt it incumbent on himself to prove that it was right." ^
Mr. Hopkins' review was written before Mr. Darwin had fully
expressed his views as to the origin of man. He says, the great
difficulty in any theory of development is " the transition in pass-
ing up to man from the animals next beneath him, not to man con-
sidered merely as a physical organism, but to man as an intellectual
and moral being. Lamarck and the author of the ' Vestio;es '
have not hesitated to expose themselves to a charge of gross
materialism in deriving mind from matter, and in making all its
properties and operations depend on our physical organization.
.... We believe that man has an immortal soul, and that the
beasts of the field have not. If any one deny this, we can have no
common ground of argument with him. Now we would ask, at
what point of his progressive improvement ditl man acquire this
spiritual part of his being, endowed with the awful attribute of
1 Lay Sermons and Re.vieics, p. 323. It is admitted that varieties innumerable have been
produced by natural causes, but Professor Huxley says it has not been proved that
any one species has ever been thus formed. A fortiori, therefore, it has not been proved that
all genera and species, with all their attributes of instinct and intelligence have been thus
formed.
2 Frazer^s Magazine, July, 1860, p. 80.
22 PART n. ch. I — origin of man.
immortality ? Was it an ' accidental variety,' seized upon by the
power of 'natural selection,' and made permanent? Is the step
from the finite to the infinite to be regarded as one of the indefi-
nitely small steps in man's continuous progress of development,
and effected by the operation of ordinary natural causes ? " ^
The point now in liand, however, is tliat Mr. Darwin's theory
is incapable of proof. From the nature of the case, what concerns
the origin of things cannot be known except by a supernatural
revelation. All else must be speculation and conjecture. And
no man under the guidance of reason will renounce the teachings
of a well-authenticated revelation, in obedience to human specula-
tion, however ingenious. The uncertainty attending all philosoph-
ical or scientific theories as to the origin of things, is sufficiently
apparent from their number and inconsistencies. Science as soon
as she gets past the actual and the extant, is in the region of spec-
ulation, and is merged into philosophy, and is subject to all its hal-
lucinations.
Theories of the Universe.
Thus we have, —
1. The purely atheistic theory ; which assumes that matter has
existed forever, and that all the universe contains and reveals is
due to material forces.
2. The theory which admits the creation of matter, but denies
any further intervention of God in the world, and refers the origin
of life to physical causes. This was the doctrine of Lamarck, and
of the author of the '* Vestiges of Creation," and is the theory to
which Professor Huxley, notwithstanding his denial of spontaneous
generation in the existing state of things, seems strongly inclined.
In his address as President of the British Association for the Pro-
motion of Science, delivered in September, 1870, he said: "Look-
ing back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record
of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any
means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its
appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious
matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the
admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode
in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using
words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible, where
belief is not ; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of
genealogically recorded time to the still more remote period when
the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions,
1 Frazer's Magazine, July, 1860, p. 88.
§ 2] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 23
which it can no more see again than a man may recall his infancy, *
I should expect t6 be a witness of the evolution of living pi'otoplasm
from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under forms
of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of
determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matters as
ammonium cai'bonates, oxalates and tai'trates, alkaline and earthy
phosphates, and water, without the aid of light." ^ It had been well
for the cause of truth, and well for hundreds who have been per-
verted by his writings, if Mr. Darwin had recognized this distinc-
tion between "scientific belief" needing "strong foundations," and
" expectation " founded, as Professor Huxley says in a following
sentence, "on analogical reasoning." In the paper already quoted
in " Fraser's Magazine," the writer says in reference to Darwin :
" We would also further remind him that the philosophical natu-
ralist must not only train the eye to observe accurately, but the
mind to think logically ; and the latter will often be found the
harder task of the two. With respect to all but the exact sci-
ences, it may be said that the highest mental faculty which they call
upon us to exert is that by which we separate and appreciate justly
the possible, the probable^ and the demonstrable.^^ ^
Darwin.
3. The third speculative view is that of Mr. Darwin and his
associates, who admit not only the creation of matter, but of living
matter, in the form of one or a few primordial germs fi'om which
without any purpose or design, by the slow operation of unintelli-
gent natural causes, and accidental variations, during untold ages,
all the orders, classes, genera, species, and varieties of plants and
animals, from the lowest to the highest, man included, have been
formed. Teleology, and therefore, mind, or God, is expressly ban-
ished from the world. In arguino; against the idea of God's con-
trolling with design the operation of second causes. Mi'. Dar-
win asks, " Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the
pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his
grotesque pouter and fan-tail breeds ? Did He cause the frame and
mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be
formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the
bull for man's brutal sport ? But, if we give up the principle in
one case, — if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval
dog were intentionally guided, in order that the greyhound, for in-
stance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed,
1 Athenaeum, London, September 17, 18T0, p. 376. 2 Juiy^ iggo, p. 90.
24 PART n. Ch. I. — ORIGIN OF MAN.
no shadow of reason can be assigned for the behef that variations,
ahke in nature and the resuh of the same general laws, which have
been the oroundwork through natural selection of the formation of
the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish
it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief ' that vari-
ation has been led along certain beneficial lines,' like a stream
' along definite and useful lines of irrigation.' " ^ In this paragraph
man is declared to be an unintended product of nature.
J. J. Murphy.
4. Others ao-ain, unable to believe that unintelligent causes can
produce effects indicating foresight and design, insist that there
must be intelligence engaged in the production of such effects, but
they place this intelligence in nature and not in God. This, as
remarked above, is a revival of the old idea of a Demiurgus or
Anima mundi. Mr. J. J. Murphy, in his work on " Habit and
Intelligence," says, I believe " that there is something in organic
progress which mere natural selection among spontaneous varia-
tions will not account for. Finally, I believe this something is that
orfn-anizins: intelligence which guides the action of the inorganic
forces and forms structures which neither natural selection nor
any other unintelligent agency could form." ^ What he means by
intelHgence and where it resides we learn from the preface to the
first volume of his book. "The word intelligence," he says,
" scarcely needs definition, as I use it in its familiar sense. It will
not be questioned by any one that intelligence is found in none but
living beings ; but it is not so obvious tliat intelligence is an attri-
bute of all livino; beings, and coextensive with life itself. When I
speak of intelligence, however, I mean not only the conscious in-
telligence of the mind, but also the organizing intelligence which
adapts the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, and every other part
of an organism for its work. The usual belief is, that the organ-
izing intelligence and the mental intelligence are two distinct intel-
ligences. I have stated the reasons for my belief that they are not
distinct, but are two separate manifestations of the same intelli-
gence, which is coextensive witli life, though it is for the most part
unconscious, and only becomes conscious of itself in the brain of
man." ^
1 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, edit. New York, 1868, vol.
ii. pp. 515, 516.
2 Habit and JnleUigence, in their connection with the Laws of Matter and Force. A iseries
of Scientific Essays. By Joseph John Murphy. London, 1869, vol. i. pi 348.
8 Ibid. vol. i. p. vi.
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 25
Owen.
5. Professor Owen, England's great naturalist, agrees with Dar-
win in two points : first, in the derivation or gradual evolution of
species ; and secondly, that this derivation is determined by the
operation of natural causes. " I have been led," he says, " to recog-
nize species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural
law, or secondary cause ; and that, not only successively, but pro-
gressively ; from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under
its old ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the glorious
garb of the human form." ^ He differs from Darwin in that he
does not refer the origin of species to natural selection, i. e., to the
law of the survival of the fittest of accidental variations ; but to
inherent or innate tendencies. " Every species changes, in time,
by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto." ^ And in the second place
he does not regard these changes as accidental variations, but as
designed and carried out in virtue of an original plan. " Species
owe as little," he says ^ " to the accidental concurrence of environ-
ing circumstances as Kosmos depends on a fortuitous concourse
of atoms. A purposive route of development and change, of cor-
relation and interdependence, manifesting intelligent will, is as
determinable in the succession of races as in the development and
organization of the individual. Generations do not vary acciden-
tally, in any and every direction ; but in preordained, definite,
and correlated courses." *
The Iteign of Laiv Theory.
6. Still another view is that which demands intelligence to ac-
count for the wonders of organic life, and finds that intelligence in
God, but repudiates the idea of the supernatural. That is, it does
not admit that God ever works except through second causes or by
the laws of nature. Those who adopt this view are willing to ad-
mit the derivation of species ; and to concede that extant species
were formed by the modifications of those which preceded them ;
but maintain that they were thus formed according to the purpose,
and by the continued agency, of God ; an agency ever operative
in guiding the operation of natural laws so that they accomplish
the designs of God. The difference between this and Professor
Owen's theory is, that he does not seem to admit of this continued
1 American Journal of Science, 1869, p. 43.
2 Ibid. p. 52. 3 Ibid. p. 52.
* See Prof. Owen's work on the Anatomy of Vertebrates, the fortieth chapter, which
chapter was reprinted in the American Journal of Science for January 1869.
26 PART I. Ch. L — origin OF MAN.
intelligent control of God in nature, but refers everything to the
original, preordaining purpose or plan of the Divine Being.
7. Filially, without pretending to exhaust the speculations on
this subject, we have what may be called the commonly received and
Scriptural doctrine. That doctrine teaches, — (1.) That the uni-
verse and all it contains owe their existence to the will and power
of God ; that matter is not eternal, nor is life self-originating.
(2.) God endowed matter with properties or forces, which He up-
holds, and in accordance with which He works in all the ordinary
operations of his providence. That is. He uses them everywhere
and constantly, as we use them in our narrow sphere. (3.) That in
the beoinnins: He created, or caused to be, every distinct kind of
plant and animal : " And God said. Let the earth bring forth grass,
the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it was so."
" And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his
kind : and it was so." This is the Scriptural account of the origin
of species. According to this account each species was specially
created, not ex nihilo, nor without the intervention of secondaiy
causes, but nevertheless originally, or not derived, evolved, or
developed from preexisting species. These distinct species, or kinds
of plants and animals thus separately originated, are permanent.
They never pass from one into the other. It is, however, to be
remembered that species are of two kinds, as naturalists distinguish
them, namely, natural and artificial. The former are those whicli
have their foundation in nature ; which had a distinct origin, and
are capable of indefinite propagation. The latter are such distinc-
tions as naturalists have made for their own convenience. Of
course, it is not intended that every one of the so-called species of
plants and animals is original and permanent, when the only dis-
tinction between one species and another may be the accidental
shape of a leaf or colour of a feather. It is only of such species as
have their foundation in nature that originality and permanence
are asserted. Artificial species, as they are called, are simply vari-
eties. Fertility of offspring is the recognized criterion of sameness
of species. If what has been just said be granted, then, if at any
time since the original creation, new species have appeared on the
earth, they owe their existence to the immediate intervention of
God.
Here then are at least seven different views as to the origin of
species. How is it possible for science to. decide between them ?
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 2i
Science has to do with the facts and laws of nature. But here the
question concerns the origin of such facts. " Here," says Dr.
Gray, " proofs, in the proper sense of the word, are not to be had.
We are beyond the region of demonstration, and have only proba-
bilities to consider." ^ Christians have a right to protest against
the arraying of probabilities against the clear teachings of Scrip-
ture. It is not easy to estimate the evil that is done by eminent
men throwing tiie weight of their authority on the side of unbelief,
influenced by a mere balance of probabilities in one department,
to the neglect of the most convincing proofs of a different kind.
They treat, for example, the question of the unity of the human
race, exclusively as a zoological question, and ignore the testimony
of history, of language, and of Scripture. Thus they often decide
against the Bible on evidence that would not determine an intelli-
gent jury in a suit for twenty shillings.
Admitted Difficulties in the Way of the Darwinian Theory.
One of the great excellences of Mr. Darwin is his candor. He
acknowledges that there are grave objections against the doctrine
which he endeavours to establish. He admits that if one species
is derived by slow gradations from another, it would be natural to
expect the intermediate steps, or connecting links, to be every-
where visible. But he acknowledges that such are not to be found,
that during the whole of the historical period, species have re-
mained unchanged. They are now precisely what they were
thousands of years ago. There is not the slightest indication of
any one passing into another ; or of a lower advancing towards a
higher. This is admitted. The only answer to the difficulty
thus presented is, that the change of species is so slow a process
that no indications can be reasonably expected in the few thou-
sand years embraced within the limits of history. When it is fur-
ther objected that geology presents the same difficulty, that the
genera and species of fossil animals are just as distinct as those
now living ; that new species appear at certain epochs entirely dif-
ferent from those which preceded ; that the most perfect specimens
of these species often appear at the beginning of a geologic period
and not toward its close ; the answer is that the records of geology
are too imperfect, to give us full knowledge on this subject : that
innumerable intermediate and transitional forms may have passed
away and left no trace of their existence. All this amounts to an
1 Atlantic Monthly, August, 1860, p. 230.
28 PART II. Ch. I. — ORIGIN OF MAN.
admission that all history and all geology are against the theory ;
that they not only do not furnish any facts in its support, but that
they do furnish facts which, so far as our knowledge extends, con-
tradict it. In reference to tiiese objections from geology, Mr. Dar-
win says, " I can answer these questions and objections only on
the supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect
than most geologists believe. The number of specimens in all our
museums is absolutely as nothing compared with the countless gen-
erations of countless species which have certainly existed." ^ Nev-
ertheless the record, as far as it goes, is against the theory.
With regard to the more serious objection that the theory assumes
that matter does the work of mind, that design is accomplished
without any designer, Mv. Darwin is equally candid. " Nothing
at first," he says, " can appear more difficult to believe than that
the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by
means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by
the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the
individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficult}'', though appearing
to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real, if
we admit the following propositions, namely, that all parts of the
organization and instincts offer at least individual differences, —
that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation
of profitable deviations of structure or instinct, — and, lastly, that
gradations in the state of perfection of each oi'gan may have existed,
each good of its kind." ^
Again, he says, " Although the belief that an organ so perfect
as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is more
than enough to stagger any one ; yet in the case of any organ, if
we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for
its possessor; then, under changing conditions of life, there is no
logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree
of perfection through natural selection." ^ Mr. Darwin refuses to
be staggered by that which he says is enough to stagger any one.
Give him a sufficient number of millions of years, and fortuitous
complications may accomplish anything. If a rude piece of flint
be found in deposits, it is declared to be the work of man, because
it indicates design, while such an organ as the eye may be formed
by natural selection acting blindly. This, Dr. Gray says in his
apology, is, or would be, a strange contradiction.
1 Origin of Species, p. 650. * Ibid. p. 545.
8 Ibid. p. 251.
§2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 29
Sterility of Syhrids.
The immutability of species is stamped on tlie very face of nature.
What the letters of a book would be if all were thrown in confu-
sion, the genera and species of plants and animals would be, if they
were, as Darwin's theory assumes, in a state of constant variation,
and that in every possible direction. All line-marks would be oblit-
erated, and the thoughts of God, as species have been called, would
be obliterated from his works. To prevent this confusion of
" kind," it has been established as a law of nature that animals
of different "kinds" cannot mingle and produce something differ-
ent from either parent, to be again mingled and confused with
other animals of a still different kind. In other words, it is a law
of nature, and therefore a law of God, that hybrids should be
sterile. This fact Mr. Darwin does not deny. Neither does he
deny the weight of the argument derived from it against his theory.
He only, as in the cases already mentioned, endeavours to account
for the fact. Connecting links between species are missing ; but
they may have perished. Hybrids are sterile ; but that may be
accounted for in some other way without assuming that it was
designed to secure the permanence of species. When a great fact
in nature is found to secure a most important end in natui'e, it is
fair to infer that it was designed to accomplish that end, and con-
sequently that end is not to be overlooked or denied.
Greographieal Distribution.
Mr. Darwin is equally candid in reference to another objection
to his doctrine. " Turning to geographical distribution," he says,^
" the difficulties encountered on the theory of descent with modifi-
cation are serious enough. All the individuals of the same species,
and all the species of the same genus, or even higher group, must
have descended from common parents ; and therefore, in however
distant and isolated parts of the world they may now be found, they
must in the course of successive generations have travelled from
some one point to all the others." When it is remembered that
this is true of the mollusks and Crustacea, animals whose power of
locomotion is very limited, this almost universal distribution from
one centre would seem to ba an impossibility. Darwin's answer
to this is the same as to the difficulties already mentioned. He
throws himself on the possibilities of unlimited duration. Nobody
can tell what may have happened during the untold ages of the
1 Origin of Species, p. 547.
30 PART U. Ch. L — origin OF MAN.
past. " Looking to geographical distribution," he says, " if we
admit that there has been througli tlie long course of ages much
mio-ration from one part of the world to another, owing to former
climatal and geographical changes and to the many occasional and
unknown means of dispersal, tlien we can understand, on the the-
ory of descent with modification, most of the great leading facts in
distribution." ^ Every one must see how inconclusive is all such
reasoning. If we admit that many unknown things may have
happened in the boundless past, then we can understand most, but
not all, of the facts which stand opposed to the theory of the deri-
vation of species. The same remark may be made in reference to
the constant appeal to the unknown effects of unlimited durations.
" The chief cause," says Mr. Darwin, " of our natural unwilling-
ness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct
species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change
of which we do not see the steps The mind cannot possibly
grasp the full meaning of the term of even ten million years ; it
cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations
accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations." ^
If we say that the ape during the historic period extending over
thousands of years has not made the slightest approximation towards
becoming a man, we are told, Ah ! but you do not know what he
will do in ten millions of years. To which it is a sufficient reply
to ask, How much is ten million times nothing ?
; Ordinary men reject this Darwinian theory with indignation as
well as Avith decision, not only because it calls upon them to accept
the possible as demonstrably true, but because it ascribes to blind,
unintelligent causes the wonders of purpose and design which the
world everywhere exhibits ; and because it effectually banishes
God from his works. To such men it is a satisfaction to know that
the theory is rejected on scientific grounds by the great majority
of scientific men. Mr. Darwin himself says, " The several diffi-
culties here discussed, namely — that, though we find in our geo-
logical formations many links between the species which now exist
and which formerly existed, we do not find infinitely numerous
fine transitional forms closely joining them all together ; the sudden
manner in which several whole groups of species first appear in
our European formations ; the almost entire absence, as at present
known, of formations rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian strata, —
are all undoubtedly of the most serious nature. We see this in the
fact tliat tlie most eminent palEeontologists, namely, Cuvier,
1 Origin of Species, p. 564. ^ J^^'i- V- 570.
§ 2.] ANTI-SCRIPTURAL THEORIES. 31
Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all our
greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have
unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of
species." ^
In 1830 there was a prolonged discussion of this subject in
the Academie des Sciences in Paris, Cuvier taking the side of
the permanence of species, and of creation and organization gov-
erned by final purpose ; while GeofFroy St. Hilaire took the side
of the derivation and mutability of species, and " denied," as
Professor Owen says, " evidence of design, and protested against
the deduction of a purpose." The decision was almost unani-
mously in favour of Cuvier ; and from 1830 to 1860 there was
scarcely a voice raised in opposition to the doctrine which Cuvier ad-
vocated. This, as Biichner thinks, was the triumph of empiricism,
appealing to facts, over philosophy guided by " Apriorische Spec-
ulationen." Professor Agassiz, confessedly the first of living nat-
uralists, thus closes his review of Darwin's book : " Were the
transmutation theory true, the geological record should exhibit an
uninterrupted, succession of types blending gradually into one
another. The fact is that throughout all geological times each
period is characterized by definite specific types, belonging to defi-
nite genera, and these to definite families, referable to definite
orders, constituting definite classes and definite branches, built
upon definite plans. Until the facts of nature are shown to iiave
been mistaken by those who have collected them, and that they
have a different meaning from that now generally assigned to them,
I shall therefore consider the transmutation theory as a scientific
mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mis-
chievous in its tendency." ^ If species, then, are immutable, their
1 Origin of Species, ]>. 383. In an earlier edition of his work he included Professor Owen's
name in this list, which he now omits, and he also withdraws that of Lyell; addinjif to the
passage above quoted the words, " But Sir Charles Lyell now gives the support of his high
authority to the opposite side." Professor Owen, as shown above, although now admitting
the mutability of species, is very far from adopting Mr. Darwin's theory. The essential
element of that theory is the denial of teleology; the assertion that species owe their origin
to ihe unintelligent operation of natural causes. This Owen distinctly denies. "Assum-
ing, then," he sa\'s, " that Paheolkerium did ultimately become Equus, I gain no conception
of the operation of the etJective force by personifying as ' Nature ' the aggregate of beings
which compose the universe, or the laws which govern these beings, b}- giving to my per-
sonification an attribute which can properly be predicated only of intelligence, and by sav-
ing, ' Nature has selected the mid-hoof and rejected the others.' " American Journal of
Science, second series, vo'. xlvii. p. 4L As to Sir Charles Lyell, unless he has become a
new man since the publication of the ninth edition of his Principles of Gcdogy in 1853, he
is as far as I'nifessor Owen from adi)))ting the Darwinian theory; although he may admit,
ill a certa'n sense, tiie derivation of species.
2 American Journal, July, 18G0, p. 154.
32 PART n. Ch. l — origin of man.
existence must be due to the agency of God, mediate or immediate,
and in either case so exercised as to make them answer a thought
and purpose in the divine mind. And, more especially, man does
not owe his origin to the gradual development of a lower form of
irrational life, but to the energy of his Maker in whose image he
was created.
Pangenesis.
Mr. Darwin refers, in the " Origin of Species,"^ to " tlie hypoth-
esis of Pangenesis," which, he says, he had developed in another
work. As this hypothesis is made subservient to the one under
consideration, it serves to illustrate its nature and gives an insight
into the character of the writer's mind. Mr. Mivart says that the
hypothesis of Pangenesis may be stated as follows : " That each
living organism is ultimately made up of an almost infinite number
of minute particles, or organic atoms, termed ' gemmules,' each of
which has the power of reproducing its kind. Moreover, that these
particles circulate freely about the organism which is made up of
them, and are derived from all parts of all the organs of the less
remote ancestors of each such organism durino; all the states and
stages of such several ancestors' existence ; and therefore of the
several states of each of such ancestors' organs. That such a com-
plete collection of gemmules is aggregated in each ovum and sper-
matozoon in most animals, and each part capable of reproducing
by gemmation (budding) in the lowest animals and plants. There-
fore in many of such lower organisms such a congeries of ancestral
gemmules must exist in every part of their bodies, since in them
every part is capable of reproducing by gemmation. Mr. Darwin
must evidently admit this, since he says, ' It has often been said
by naturalists that each cell of a plant has the actual or potential
capacity of reproducing the whole plant ; but it has this power
only in virtue of containing gemmules derived from every part.' " ^
These gemmules are organic atoms ; they are almost infinite
in number ; they are derived from all the organs of the less
remote ancestors of the plant or animal ; they are stored in every
ovum or spermatozoon ; they are capable of reproduction. But
reproduction, as involving the control of physical causes to accom-
plish a purpose, is a work of intelligence. These inconceivably
numerous and minute gemmules are, therefore, the seats of intelli-
gence. Surely this is not science. Any theory which needs the
support of such a hypothesis must soon be abandoned. It would
1 Page 196.
2 Genesis of Species, by St. George Mivart, F. K. S. London, 1871, chap. x. p. 208.
\
§3.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 83
be far easier to believe in fairies forming every plant, than in these
gemmules.
Finally, it may be noticed that Mr. Wallace, although advocating
the doctrine of " Natural Selection," contends that it is not appli-
cable to man ; that it will not account for his original or present
state ; and that it is impossible, on Mr. Darwin's theory, to account
for man's physical organization, for his mental powers, or for his
moral nature. To this subject the tenth chapter of his work is
devoted.
§ 3. Antiquity of Man.
"Anthropologists are now," as we are told, " pretty well agreed
that man is not a recent introduction into the earth. All who have
studied the question, now admit that his antiquity is very great;
and that, though we have to some extent ascertained the mini-
mum of time during which he must have existed, we have made
no approximation towards determining that far greater period dur-
ing which he may have, and probably has, existed. We can with
tolerable certainty affirm that man must have inhabited the earth
a thousand centuries ago, but we cannot assert that he positively
did not exist, or that there is any good evidence against his having
existed, for a period of ten thousand centuries." ^
On this it may be remarked, first, that it is a historical fact that
nothing is less reliable than these calculations of time. A volume
might be filled with examples of the mistakes of naturalists in this
matter. The world has not forgotten the exultation of the enemies
of the Bible when the number of successive layers of lava on the
sides of Mount Etna was found to be so great as to require, as was
said, thousands upon thousands of yeai's for their present condition.
All that has passed away. Mr. Lyell calculated that two hundred
and twenty thousand years w^ere necessary to account for changes
now iroino; on on the coast of Sweden. Later geologists reduce the
time to one tenth of that estimate. A piece of pottery was dis-
covered deeply buried under the deposits at the mouth of the Nile.
It was confidently asserted that the deposit could not have been
made during the historic period, until it was proved that the article
in question was of Roman manufacture. Sober men of science,
therefore, have no confidence in these calculations requiring thou-
sands of centuries, or even millions of years, for the production of
effects subsequent to the great geological epochs.
The second remark in reference to this great antiquity claimed
for the human race, is that the reasons assigned for it are, in the
1 (Vallace cm Natural Selection, p. 303.
VOL. II. 3
34 PART 11. Ch. I. — origin OF MAN.
judgment of the most eminent men of science, unsatisfactory.
The facts urged to prove that men have lived for an indefinite
number of ages on the earth, are, (1.) The existence of villages
built on piles, now submerged in lakes in Switzerland and in some
other places, which, it is assumed, are of great antiquity. (2.) The
discovery of human remains in a fossil state in deposits to which
geologists assign an age counted by tens, or hundreds, of thousands
of years. (3.) The discovery of utensils of different kinds made
of flint, in connection with the remains of extinct animals.
(4.) The early separation of men into the distinct races in which
they now exist. On this point Sir Charles Lyell says : " Natural-
ists have long felt that to render probable the received opinion that
all the leading varieties of the human family have originally sprung
from a single pair (a doctrine against which there appears to me to
be no sound objection), a much greater lapse of time is required for
the slow and gradual formation of races (such as the Caucasian,
Mongolian, and Negro) than is embraced in any of the popular
systems of chronology." The Caucasian and the Negro are dis-
tinctly marked in the Egyptian monuments to which an antiquity
of three thousand years is ascribed. We must, therefore, he
argues, allow " for a vast series of antecedent ages " to account
for the gradual formation of these distinct races. ^ In addition to
all these arguments, it is contended that monuments and records
exist which prove the existence of man on the earth long before
the period assigned to his creation in the Bible.
Lake Dioellings.
In many of the lakes of Switzerland piles have been discovered
worn down to the surface of the mud, or projecting slightly above
it, which once supported human habitations. These are so numer-
ous as to render it evident that whole villages were thus sustained
over the surface of the water. These villages, " nearly all of
them," are " of unknown date, but the most ancient of" them
"certainly belonged to the age of stone, for hundreds of implements
resembling those of the Danish shell-mounds and peat mosses have
been dredged up from the mud into which the piles were driven."
Numerous bones of no less than fifty-four species of animals have
been dug up from these localities, all of which, Avitli one exception,
are still living in Europe. The remains of several domesticated
1 Principles of Geology, by Sir Charles Lyell, F. R. S., ninth edition, Boston, 1853, p. 660.
Also, The Geoloyical Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, by the same writer, Philadelphia,
1863, p. 385.
§3.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 35
animals, as the ox, sheep, goat, and dog, are included in the
number.^
There is evidently in all this no proof of great antiquity. Even
as late as during the last century, similar huts, supported on piles,
were to be seen. All the animal remains found are of extant
species. There is nothing to show that these lake dwellings were
even as old as the time of the Romans. The fact relied upon is
the absence of metal, and the presence of stone implements.
Hence, it is inferred that these villao-es belonged to the " Stone
Age." To this succeeded the " Bronze Age," and to that the
Age of Iron. Sir Charles Lyell informs us that the Swiss geolo-
gists, as represented by M. Morlot, assign " to the bronze age a
date of between three thousand and four thousand years, and to
the stone period an age of five thousand to seven thousand."^
It is, however, a mere arbitrary speculation that there ever was
a stone age. It is founded on the assumption that the original
condition of man was one of barbarism, from which he elevated
himself by slow degrees ; during the first period of his progress
he used only implements of stone ; then those of bronze ; and then
those of iron ; and that thousands of years elapsed before the race
passed from one of these stages of progress to another. Hence,
if remains of men are found anywhere in coimection with stone
implements, they are referred to the stone age. According to this
mode of reasoning, if in an Indian village flint arrow-heads and
hatchets should be found, the inference Avould be that the whole
world was in barbarism when those implements were used. Ad-
mittincr that at the time the lake dwellinos were inhabited, the
people of Switzerland, and even all the people of Europe, were
unacquainted with the iise of the metals, that would not prove that
civilization was not at its height in Egypt or India. Moreover,
the assumption that the original state of man was one of barbarism,
is not only contrary to the Bible and to the convictions of the great
body of the learned, but, as is believed, to the plainest historical
facts.
Fossil Human Remains.
Much more weight in this discussion is attached to the discovery
of human remains in the same localities and under the same circum-
stances with those of animals now extinct. From this it Is inferred
that man must have lived when those animals still inhabited the
earth. These human remains are not found in any of the ancient
fossiliferous rocks. The Scriptural fact that man was the last of
1 Antiquity of Man, chap. ii. p. 17. ^ Ibid. p. 28.
86 PART n. Ch. l — origin of man.
the living creatures which proceeded from the hand of God, stands
unimpeaclied by any scientific fact. A nearly perfect human skel-
eton was found imbedded in a limestone rock on the island of
Guadaloupe. That rock, however, is of modern origin, and is still
in process of formation. The age assigned to this fossil is only
about two hundred years. A fragment of conglomerate rock was
obtained at the depth of ten feet beloAV the bed of the river Dove,
in Enixland, containing silver coins of the reign of Edward the
First. This shows that it does not require many years to form
rocks, and to bury them deeply under the surface. The remains
on which stress is laid are found only in caverns and buried under
deposits of peat or of earthy matter. Geologists seem to be agreed
as to the fact that human bones have been found in certain caves
in France, Belgium, and England intimately associated with the
remains of animals now living, and with those of a few of the
extinct races.
Tiie fact being admitted, the question is, How is it to be ac-
counted for ? This juxtaposition is no certain proof of contempora-
neousness. These caverns, once the resort of wild beasts, became
to men places of concealment, of defence, of worship, or of sepul-
ture, and, therefore, as Sir Charles Lyell himself admits, " It is
not on the evidence of such intermixtures that we ought readily to
admit either the high antiquity of the human race, or the recent
date of certain lost species of quadrupeds." ^
In immediate connection with the passage just referred to, Lyell
sugirests another method by which the remains of animals belong-
incr to very different ages of the world might become mixed to-
gether. That is, "open fissures" which "serve as natural pit-
falls." He quotes the following account from Professor Sedgwick
of a chasm of enormous but unknown depth, Avhich "is surrounded
by grassy shelving banks, and many animals, tempted toward its
brink, have fallen down and perished in it. The approach of
cattle is now prevented by a strong lofty wall ; but there can be
no doubt that, during the last two or three thousand years, great
masses of bony breccia must have accumulated in the lower parts
of the great fissure, which probably descends through the whole
thickness of the scar-limestone to the depth of perhaps five or
six hundred feet." To this Lyell adds, " When any of these
natural pit-falls happen to communicate with lines of subterranean
caverns, the bones, earth, and breccia may sink by their own
weight, or be washed into the vaults below." ^
1 Principles of Geology, ninth edition, p. 740.
2 Joid. pp. 740, 741.
§3.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 37
There is a third way in which this intermingling of the bones
of animals of different ages may be accounted for. With legard
to the remarkable caverns in the province of Liege, Sir Charles
Lyell says that Dr. Schmerling, the naturalist, by whom they had
been carefully and laboriously examined, did not think they were
" dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic contents
had been swept into them by streams communicating with the sur-
face of the country. The bones, he suggested, may often have
been rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their
underground destination." ^ It is clear, therefore, that no conclu-
sive argument to prove that man was contemporary with certain
extinct animals can be drawn from the fact that their remains have
in some rare instances been found in the same localities.
Human Bones found deeply buried.
Still less weight is to be attached to the fact that human bones
have been found deej>ly buried in the earth. Every one knows
that great changes have been made in the earth's surface within
the historic period. Such changes are produced sometimes by the
slow operation of the causes which have buried the foundations of
such ancient cities as Jerusalem and Rome far beneath the present
surface of the ground. At other times they have been brought
about by sudden catastrophes. It is not surprising that human
remains should be found in peat-bogs, if as Sir Charles Lyell tells
us, " All the coins, axes, arms, and other utensils found in British
and French mosses, are Roman ; so that a considerable portion of
tlie peat in Euro])ean peat-bogs is evidently not more ancient than
the age of Julius Caesar." ^
The data by which the rate of deposits is determined are so
uncertain that no dependence can be placed upon them. Sir
Charles Lyell says, " the lowest estimate of the time required " for
the formation of the existing delta of the Mississippi, is more than
one hundred thousand years. ^ According to the careful examina-
tion made by gentlemen of the Coast Survey and other United
States officers, the time during which the delta has been in progress
is four thousand four hundred years.* Since the memory of man, or,
since fishing-liuts have been built on the coasts of Sweden, there
has been such a subsidence of the coast that " a fishing-hut having
1 Antiquity of Man, p. 64. 2 Principles of Geology, p. 721.
3 Antiquity of Man, p. 43.
^ See Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, etc., by Captain A.
A. Humphrej's, and Lieutenant H. L. Abbott, Corps of Topographical Engineers, U. S.
Army, 1861,"p. 435.
38 PART n. ch. l — origin of man.
a rude fire-place within, was struck, in digging a canal, at a depth
of sixty feet." ^ " At the earthquake in 1819 about the Delta of
the Indus, an area of two thousand square miles became an inland
sea, and the fort and village of Sindree sunk till the tops of the
houses were just above the water. Five and a half miles from
Sindree, parallel with this sunken area, a region was elevated ten
feet above the delta, fifty miles long and in some parts ten broad." ^
While such changes, secular and paroxysmal, gradual and sudden,
have been in operation for thousands of years, it is evident that
the intermincvlincr of the remains of recent with those of extinct
races of animals furnishes no proof that the former were contem-
poraneous with the latter.
Flint Implements.
Quite as much stress has been laid on the discovery of certain
implements made of flint under deposits which, it is contended, are
of such age as prove that man must have existed on the earth for
ages before the time assigned in the Bible for his creation. To
this argument the same answer is to be o-'ven. First, that the
presence of the works of human art in such deposits is no proof
that men were contemporaneous with such deposits ; in view
of the upheavals and displacements which all geologists admit are
of frequent occurrence in the history of our globe. And secondly,
the facts themselves are disputed, or differently interpreted by men
of science of equal authority'. This is especially true of the flint
arrows, beads, and axes found in the valley of the Somme in
France.^ Lyell is confident that the argument from them is con-
clusive. Later examinations, however, have led others to a differ-
ent conclusion. This is a question for scientific men to decide
among themselves, and which they alone are competent to decide.
So long, however, as men of the highest rank as naturalists maintain
that science knows of no facts inconsistent with the Scriptural ac-
count of the origin of man, the friends of the Bible are under no
obligation to depart from the generally received interpretation of
the Scriptures on this subject. Professor Guyot, as all who know
him or have heard his public lectures, are vvell aware, teaches
that there are no known facts which may not be accounted for on
the assumption that man has existed seven or eight thousand years
on this earth. It is well known also that this doctrine, until very
1 Dana's Manual of Geology, p. 586. 2 idid. p. 588.
* To these Lyell devotes the seventh and eighth chapters of his work on the Antiquity of
Man.
§3.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 39
recently, was universal among scientific men. Cuvier was so con-
vinced on this point that he could hardly be brought to look at
what purported to be the fossil remains of man. This conviction
on his part, was not a prejudice ; nor was it due to a reverence for
the Bible. It was a scientific conviction founded on scientific
evidence. The proofs from all sources of the recent origin of man
were considered such as to preclude the possibility of his being
contemporaneous with any of the extinct races of animals. And
even those who were led to admit that point, were in many cases
disposed to regard the fact as proving not the antiquity of man,
but the existence to a much later period than generally supposed,
of animals now extinct. The occurrence of human relics with the
bones of extinct animals, " does not seem to me," says Prestwich,
" to necessitate the carrying of man back in past time, so much
as the bringing forward of the extinct animals toward our own
time." 1 The fact that the monuments of human art cannot pre-
tend to a higher antiquity than a few thousand years, renders it
utterly incredible that man has existed on the earth hundreds of
thousands or, as Darwirr supposes, millions of years.
Argument from the Races of Men and from Ancient Monuments.
Another argument is founded on the assumption that the differ-
ence between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and negro races, which is
known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand
years before Christ as it is now, must have required countless ages
to develop and establish. To this it is obvious to answer. First,
that differences equally great have occurred in domestic animals
within the historic period. Secondly, that marked varieties are
not unfrequently produced suddenly, and, so to speak, accidentally.
Thirdly, that these varieties of race are not the effect of the blind
operation of physical causes, but by those causes as intelligently
guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose.
Animals living in the arctic regions are not only clothed in fur for
their protection from the cold, but the color of their clothing
changes with the season. So God fashions the different races of
men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they
inhabit. Dr. Livingstone, the great African traveller, informs us that
the negro type, as it is popularly conceived of, occurs very rarely in
Africa, and only in districts where great heat prevails in connection
with great moisture. The tribes in the interior of that continent
differ greatly, he says, both in hue and contour.
1 Quoted by Professor Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 582.
40 PART n. Ch. I — origin of man.
The idea that it must have taken countless ages for men to rise
from the lowest barbarism to the state of civilization indicated by
the monuments of Egypt, rests on no better assumption. The
earliest state of man instead of being his lowest, was in many
respects his highest state. And our own experience as a nation
shows that it does not require millenniums for a people to accom-
plisli greater works tlian Egypt or India can boast. Two hundred
years ago this country was a wilderness from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. What is it now ? According to Bunsen it would require
a hundred thousand years to erect all these cities, and to build all
these railroads and canals.
It is further urged as a proof of the great antiquity of man that
the monuments and monumental records of Egypt prove that a
nation existed in the highest state of civilization at the time of, or
immediately after, the flood. The chronology of the Bible, it is
argued, and the chronology of Egypt are thus shown to be irrecon-
cilable.
In reference to this difficulty it may be remarked, that the cal-
culations of Egyptologists are just as precarious, and in many in-
stances just as extravagant as those of geologists. This is proved
by their discrepancies. It may be said, however, that even the
most moderate students of Egyptian antiquities assign a date to
the reign of Manes and the building of the pyramids inconsistent
with the chronology of the Bible. To this it may be replied that
the chronology of the Bible is very uncertain. The data are for
the most part facts incidentally stated ; that is, not stated for the
purposes of chronology. The views most generally adopted rest
mainly on the authority of. Archbishop Usher, who adopted the
Hebrew text for his guide, and assumed that in the genealogical
tables each name marked one generation. A large part, however,
of Biblical scholars adopt the Septuagint chronology in preference
to the Hebrew ; so that instead of four thousand years from the
creation to the birth of Christ, we have nearly six thousand years.
Besides it is admitted, that the usual method of calculation founded
on the genealogical tables is very uncertain. The design of those
tables is not to give the regular succession of births in a given line,
but simply to mark the descent. This Is just as well done if three,
four, or more generations be omitted, as if the whole list were com-
plete. Tliat this is the plan on which these genealogical tables are
constructed is an admitted fact. " Thus in Genesis xlvi. 18, after
recording the sons of Zilpah, her grandsons and her great-grand-
sons, the writer adds, ' These are the sons of Zilpah .... and
§3.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 41
these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls.' The same thing
recurs in the case of Bilhah, verse 25, ' she bare these unto
Jacob: all the souls were seven.' Compare, verses 15, 22. No
one can pretend tliat the author of this register did not use the
term understandingly of descendants beyond the first generation.
In like manner, according to Mattliew i. 11, Josias begat his
grandson Jeclionias, and verse 8, Joram begat iiis great-great-
grandson Ozias. And in Genesis x. 15-18, Canaan, the grand-
son of Noah, is said to have begotten several whole nations, the
Jebusite, the Amorite, the Girgasite, the Hivite, etc.. etc. Noth-
ing can be plainer, therefore, than that in the usage of the Bible,
' to bear ' and ' to beget ' are used in a wide sense to indicate
descent, without restricting this to the immediate offspring." ^
The extreme uncertainty attending all attempts to determine the
chronology of the Bible is sufficiently evinced by the fact that one
hundred and eighty different calculations have been made by Jew-
ish and Christian authors, of the length of the period between
Adam and Christ. The longest of these make it six thousand
nine hundred and eighty-four, and the shortest three thousand four
hundred and eighty-three years. Under these circumstances it is
very clear that the friends of the Bible have no occasion for uneasi-
ness. If the facts of science or of history should ultimately make
it necessary to admit that eight or ten thousand years have elapsed
since the creation of man, there is nothing in the Bible in the way
of such concession. The Scriptures do not teach us how long men
have existed on the earth. Their tables of genealogy were in-
tended to pi'ove that Christ was the son of David and of the Seed
of Abraham, and not how many years had elapsed between the
creation and the advent.^
1 The Pentateuch Vindicated from the Aspersions of Bishop Colenso, by William Henry
Green, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J. New York, 1863, p. 132.
2 Herzog's Encyklopadie, article " Zeitrechnung," which quotes the Benedictine work
VArt de verifier les Dates. T. i., pp. xxvii.-xxxvi.
CHAPTER II.
NATURE OF MAN.
§ 1. Scripture Doctrine.
The Sci'iptures teach that God formed the body of man out of
the dust of the earth, and breathed into him the breath of hfe and
he became nTI tt'C3, a living soul. According to this account, man
consists of two distinct principles, a body and a soul : the one ma-
terial, the other immaterial ; the one corporeal, the other spiritual.
It is involved in this statement, first, that the soul of man is a
substance ; and, secondly, that it is a substance distinct from the
body. So that in the constitution of man two distinct substances
are included.
The idea of substance, as has been before remarked, is one of
tlie primary truths of the reason. It is given in the consciousness
of every man, and is therefore a part of the universal faith of men.
We are conscious of our thoughts, feelings, and volitions. We
know that these exercises or phenomena are constantly changing,
but that there is something of which they are the exercises and
manifestation. That something is the self which remains unchanged,
which is the same identical something, yesterday, to-day, and to-
morrow. The soul is, therefore, not a mere series of acts ; nor is it
a form of the life of God, nor is it a mere unsubstantial force, but a
real subsistence. Whatever acts is, and what is is an entity. A
nonentity is nothing, and nothing can neither have power nor pro-
duce effects. The soul of man, therefore, is an essence or entity
or substance, the abiding subject of its varying states and exercises.
The second point just mentioned is no less plain. As we can know
nothing of substance but from its phenomena, and as we are forced
by a law of our nature to believe in the existence of a substance of
which the phenomena are the manifestation, so by an equally strin-
gent necessity we are forced to believe that where the phenomena
are not only different, but incompatible, there the substances are
also different. As, therefoi-e, the phenomena or properties of
matter are essentially different from those of mind, we are forced
to conclude that matter and mind are two distinct substances ; that
§ 1.] SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE. 43
the soul is not material nor the body spiritual. " To identify mat-
ter with mind," says Cousin, in a passage before quoted, " or mind
with matter : it is necessary to pretend that sensation, thought,
volition, are reducible, in the last analysis, to solidity, extension,
figure, divisibihty, etc. ; or that solidity, extension, figure, etc., are
reducible to sensation, thought, will." ^ It may be said, therefore,
despite of materialists and idealists, that it is intuitively certain
that matter and mind are two distinct substances ; and such has
been the faith of the great body of mankind. This view of the
nature of man which is presented in the original account of his
creation, is sustained by the constant representations of the Bible.
Truths on this Subject assumed in Scripture.
The Scriptures do not formally teach any system of psychol-
ogy, but there are certain truths relating both to our physical
and mental constitution, which they constantly assume. They
assume, as we have seen, that the soul is a substance ; tliat it is a
substance distinct from the body ; and that there are two, and not
more than two, essential elements in the constitution of man. Tliis
is evident, (1.) From the distinction everywhere made between
soul and body. Thus, in the original account of the creation a
clear distinction is made between the body as formed from the dust
of the earth, and the soul or principle of life which was breathed into
it from God. And in Gen. iii. 1,9, it is said, " Dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return." As it was only the body that Avas
formed out of the dust, it is only the body that is to return to dust.
In Eccles. xii. 7, it is said, " Then shall the dust return to the earth
as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Is.
X. 18, " Shall consume .... both soul and body." Daniel says
(vii. 15), " I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my
body." Our Lord (Matt. vi. 25) commands his disciples to take
no thought for the body; and, again (Matt. x. 28), "Fear not
tliem whicli kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul : but
rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
Sucli is the constant representation of the Scriptures. The body
and soul are set forth as distinct substances, and the two together
as constituting the whole man. (2.) There is a second class of
passages equally decisive as to this point. It consists of those in
which the body is represented as a garment which is to be laid
aside ; a tabernacle or house in which the soul dwells, which it
may leave and return to. Paul, on a certain occasion, did not
1 Elements' of Psychology, Henry's trauslation, N. Y. 1856, p. 370.
44 PART n. Ch. tl — nature of man.
know whether he was in the body or out of tlie body. Peter says
he thought it meet as long as he was in this tabernacle to put his
brethren in remembrance of the truth, " knowing," as he adds,
''that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle." Paul, in 2 Cor.
V. 1, says, " If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved
we have a building of God." In the same connection, he speaks
of being unclothed and clothed upon with our house which is from
heaven ; and of being absent from the body and present with the
Lord, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are
absent from the Lord. To the Philippians (i. 23, 24) he says, " I
am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be
witii Christ ; which is far better ; nevertheless, to abide in the
flesh is more needful for you." (3.) It is the common belief of
mankind, the clearly revealed doctrine of the Bible, and part of
the faith of the Church universal, that the soul can and does exist
and act after death. If this be so, then the body and soul are two
distinct substances. The former may be disorganized, reduced to
dust, dispersed, or even annihilated, and the latter retain its con-
scious life and activity. This doctrine was taught in the Old
Testament, where the dead are represented as dwelling in Sheol,
whence they occasionally reappeared, as Samuel did to Saul. Our
Lord says that as God is not the God of the dead but of the living,
his declaring himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
proves that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now alive. Moses and
Elijah conversed with Christ on the Mount. To the dying thief
our Lord said, " To-day shalt thou " (that in which his personality
resided) " be with me in Paradise." Paul, as we have just seen,
desired to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
He knew that his conscious personal existence was to be continued
after the dissolution of his body. It is unnecessary to dwell on
this point, as the continued existence of tiie soul in full conscious-
ness and activity out of the body and in the interval between death
and the resurrection, is not denied by any Christian Church. But
if this be so it clearly proves that the soul and body are two distinct
substances, so that the former can exist independently of the latter.
Relation of the Soul and Body.
Man, then, according to the Scriptures, is a created spirit in
vital union with a material organized body. The relation between
these two constituents of our nature is admitted to be mysterious.
That is, it is incomprehensible. We do not know how the body
acts on the mind, or how the mind acts on the binly. These facts,
§1.] SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE. 45
however, are plain, (1.) That the relation between the two is a
vital union, in such a sense as that the soul is the source of life to
the body. When the soul leaves the body the latter ceases to live.
It loses its sensibility and activity, and becomes at once subject to
the chemical laws which govern unorganized matter, and by their
operation is soon reduced to dust, undistinguishable from the earth
whence it was originally taken. (2.) It is a fact of consciousness
that certain states of the body produce certain corresponding states
of the mind. The mind takes cognizance of, or is conscious of, the
impressions made by external objects on the organs of sense belong-
ing to the body. The mind sees, the mind hears, and the mind
feels, not directly or immediately (at least in our present and normal
state), but through or by means of the appropriate organs of the
body. It is also a matter of daily experience that a healthful con-
dition of the body is necessary to a healthful state of the mind ;
that certain diseases or disorders of the one produce derangement
in the operations of the other. Emotions of the mind affect the
body ; sliame suffuses the cheek ; joy causes the heart to beat and
the eyes to shine. A blow on the head renders the mind uncon-
scious, i. e., it renders the brain unfit to be the organ of its activity ;
and a diseased condition of the brain may cause irregular action
in the mind, as in lunacy. All this is incomprehensible, but it is
undeniable. (3.) It is also a fact of consciousness that, while cer-
tain operations of the body are independent of the conscious volun-
tary action of the mind, as the processes of respiration, digestion,
secretion, assimilation, etc., there are certain actions dependent on
the will. We can will to move ; and we can exert a greater or less
degree of muscular force. It is better to admit these simple facts
of consciousness and of experience, and to confess that, while they
prove an intimate and vital union between the mind and body, they
do not enable us to comprehend the nature of that union, than to
have recourse to arbitrary and fanciful theories which deny these
facts, because we cannot explain them. This is done by the advo-
cates of the doctrine of occasional causes, which denies any action
of the mind on the body or of the body on the mind, but refers all
to the immediate agency of God. A certain state of the mind is
the occasion on which God produces a certain act of the body ; and
a certain impression made on the body is the occasion on which
God produces a certain impression on the mind. Leibnitz's doctrine
of a preestablished harmony is equally unsatisfactory. He denied
that one substance could act on another of a different kind ; that
matter could act on mind or mind on matter. He proposed to
46 PART II. Ch. II. — nature OF MAN.
account for the admitted correspondence between the varying states
of the one and those of tlie other on the assumption of a prearrange-
ment. God had foreordained that the mind should have the per-
ception of a tree whenever the tree was presented to the eye, and
that the arm should move whenever the mind had a volition to
move. But he denied any causal relation between these two series
of events.
Realistic Dualism.
The Scriptural doctrine of the nature of man as a created spirit
in vital union with an organized body, consisting, therefore, of two,
and only two, distinct elements or substances, matter and mind, is
one of great importance. It is intimately connected with some of
the most important doctrines of the Bible ; with the constitution of
the person of Christ, and consequently with the nature of his re-
deeming work and of his relation to the children of men; with the
doctrine of the fall, original sin, and of regeneration ; and with the
doctrines of a future state and of the resurrection. It is because
of this connection, and not because of its interest as a question
in psychology, that the true idea of man demands the careful
investiiTfvtion of the theologian.
The doctrine above stated, as the doctrine of the Scriptures and
of the Church, is properly designated as realistic dualism. That
is, it asserts the existence of two distinct res, entities, or substances ;
the one extended, tangible, and divisible, the object of the senses ;•
the other unextended and indivisible, the thinking, feeling, and
willing subject in man. This doctrine stands opposed to materialism
and idealism, which although antagonistic systems in other respects,
agree in denying any dualism of substance. The one makes the
mind a function of the body ; the other makes the body a form of
the mind. But, according to the Scriptures and all sound philoso-
phy, neither is the body, as Delitzsch ^ says, a precipitate of tiie
mind, nor is the mind a sublimate of matter.
The Scriptural docti'ine of man is of course opposed to the old
heathen doctrine which represents him as the form in which nature,
der Naturgeist, the anima mundi, comes to self-consciousness ; and
also to the wider pantheistic doctrine according to which men are
the highest manifestations of the one universal principle of being
and life ; and to the doctrine which represents man as the union
of the impersonal, universal reason or Aoyo?, with a living corporeal
organization. According to this last mentioned view, man con-
sists of the body (a-Qifia), soul (iA"X^)» ^"^ Xoyos, or the impersonal
1 Biblische Psycholoffie, p. 64.
§2.] TRICHOTOMY. 47
reason. This is very nearly the Apollinarian doctrine as to the
constitution of Christ's person, applied to all mankind.
§ 2. Trichotomy.
It is of more consequence to remark that the Scriptural doctrine
is opposed to Trichotomy, or the doctrine that man consists of
three distinct substances, body, soul, and spirit ; o-Ji/Aa, i/^^x'?- and
TTi'cvfjia ; corpus, anima, and animus. This view of the nature of
man is of tlie more importance to the theologian because it has not
only been held to a greater or less extent in the Church, but also
because it has greatly influenced the form in which other doctrines
have been presented ; and because it has some semblance of sup-
port from the Scriptures tliemselves. The doctrine has been held
in different forms. The simplest, the most intelligible, and the one
most commonly adopted is, that the body is the material part of
our constitution ; the soul, or i/'^x^;, is the principle of animal life ;
and the mind, or Trviv/xa, the principle of our rational and immortal
life. When a plant dies its material organization is dissolved and
the principle of vegetable life which it contained disappears. When
a brute dies its body returns to dust, and the i/'ux^, or principle of an-
imal life by which it was animated, passes away. When a man
dies his body returns to the earth, his t/'^xv ceases to exist, his
Trvevjxa alone remains until reunited with the body at the resurrec-
tion. To the TTi/eu/^a, which is peculiar to man, belong reason, will,
and conscience. To the i/'vx»? which we have in common with the
brutes, belong understanding, feeling, and sensibility, or, the power
of sense-perceptions. To the aw/j-a belongs what is purely material.^
According to another view of the subject, the soul is neither the
body nor the mind ; nor is it a distinct subsistence, but it is the
resultant of the union of the irvevfj^a and croifxa? Or accordino- to De-
litzsch,^ there is a dualism of being in man, but a trichotomy of sub-
stance. He distinguishes between being and substance, and main-
tains, (1.) that spirit and soul (Tri/eC/xa and «/'uxr/) are not verschiedene
Wesen, but that they are verschiedene Substanzen. He says that
the rt;jn tiTD, mentioned in the history of the creation, is not the
coinpositum resulting from the union of the spirit and body, so that
the two constituted man. But it is a tertium quid, a third substance
which belongs to the constitution of his nature. (2.) But secondly,
this third principle does not pertain to the body ; it is not the higher
1 Aucjust Hahn, Lchrbuch c/es christlicheti Glaubens, p. 324.
2 Giischel in Herzojj's Enn/Mo/mlie, Article " Seele."
8 BiblUche /\'>ychol,igie, § 4, p. 128.
48 PART II. CH.n. — NATURE OF MAN.
attributes or functions of the body, but it pertains to the spirit and
is produced by it. It sustains the same relation to it tliat breatii
does to the body, or effulgence does to light. He says that the i/'^x'?
(soul) is the a-n-avyaafjia of the irvtv^a and the bond of its union with
the body.
Trichotomy anti-Seriptural.
In opposition to all the forms of trichotomy, or the docti-ine of a
threefold substance in the constitution of man, it may be remarked,
(1.) That it is opposed to the account of the creation of man as
given in Gen. ii. 7. According to that account God formed man
out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of
life, and he became •n'^n It\^3 ^. e., a being (n^n tt7?:3 ia—itt'S) i"
whom is a living soul. There is in this account no intimation of
anything more than the material body formed of the earth and the
living principle derived from God. (2.) This doctrine (trichotomy)
is opposed to the uniform usage of Scripture. So far from the
tt7D3, ^^X'h cmima, or soul, being distinguished from the n^n,
TTvevfxa, animus, or mind as either originally different or as derived
from it, these words all designate one and the same thing. They
are constantly interchanged. The one is substituted for the other,
and all that is, or can be predicated of the one, is predicated of the
other. The Hebrew ttJCD, and the Greek '/'^x^, mean breath, life,
the living principle ; that in which life and the whole life of the
subject spoken of resides. The same is true of n^~) and Trvev/xa,
they also- mean breath, life, and living principle. The Scriptures
therefore speak of the ttf23 or ^^xn not only as that which lives or
is- the principle of life to the body, but as that which thinks and
feels, which may be saved or lost, which survives the body and is
immortal. The soul is the man himself, that in which his identity
and personality I'eside. It is the Ego. Higher than the soul there
is nothing in man. Therefore it is so often used as a synonym for
self. Every soul is every man ; my soul is I ; his soul is he.
What shall a man give in exchange for his soul. It is the soul
that sins (Lev. iv. 2) ; it is the soul that loves God. We are
commanded to love God, «v oXy ry i^vxy- Hope is said to be the
anchor of the soid, and the word of God is able to save the soul.
The end of our faith is said to be (1 Peter i. 9), the salvation of
our souls ; and John (Rev. vi. 9 ; xx. 4), saw in heaven the souls
of them that were slain for the word of God. From all this it is
evident that the word i/'^x^/, or soul, does not designate the mere
animal part of our nature, and is not a substance different from the
7rv£v/xa, or spirit. (3.) A third remark on this subject is that all
§2.]
TRICHOTOMY. 49
the words above mentioned, w^:}, mi, and ni2tr3 in Hebrew, if/vxn
and TrreC/xa in Greek, and soul and spirit in English, are used in the
Scriptures indiscriminately of men and of irrational animals. If the
Bible ascribed only a (/"^XV to brutes, and both ^vxv and mev/xa to
man, there would be some ground for assuming that the two are
essentially distinct. But such is not the case. The living principle
in the brute is called both trrf^p and mi, ^^XV and -n-vevfia. That
principle in the brute creation is irrational and mortal ; in man it is
rational and immortal. " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth
upward, and the spirit of tlie beast that goeth downward to the
earth ? " Eccles. iii. 21. The soul of the brute is the immaterial
principle which constitutes its life, and which is endowed with sen-
sibility, and that measure of intelligence which experience shows
the lower animals to possess. The soul in man is a created spirit
of a higher order, wliicii has not only the attributes of sensibility,
memory, and instinct, but also the higher powers which pertain to
our intellectual, moral, and religious life. As in the brutes it is not
one substance that feels and another that remembers ; so it is not
one substance in man that is the subject of sensations, and another
substance which has intuitions of necessary truths, and which is
endowed with conscience and with the knowledge of God. Phi-
losophers speak of world-consciousness, or the immediate cognizance
which we have of what is without us ; of self-consciousness, or the
knowledge of what is within us ; and of God-consciousness, or our
knowledge and sense of God. These all belong to one and the
same immaterial, rational substance. (4.) It is fair to appeal to
the testimony of consciousness on this subject. We are conscious
of our bodies and we are conscious of our souls, i. e., of the exer-
cises and states of each ; but no man is conscious of the '/'"x^/ as dis-
tinct from tlie -irvevixa, of the soul as different from the spirit. In
other words consciousness reveals the existence of two substances
in the constitution of our nature ; but it does not reveal the exist-
ence of three substances, and therefore the existence of more than
two cannot rationally be assumed.
Doubtful Passages Explained.
(5.) The passages of Scriptures which are cited as favouring the
opposite doctrine may all be explained in consistency with the cur-
rent representations of Scripture on the subject. When Paul says
to the Thessalonians, " I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and
body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ " (1 Thessalonians v. 23), he only uses a periphrasis for
VOL. II. 4
50 PART II. Cii. II. — NATURE OF MAN.
the wliole man. As when in Luke i. 46, 47, the virgin says, " Mv
soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hatli rejoiced in God
my Saviour," soul and spirit in this passage do not mean different
tilings. And when we are commanded " Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind " (Luke x. 27), we have not an
enumeration of so many distinct substances. Nor do we distinguish
between the mind and heart as separate entities when we pray that
both may be enlightened and sanctified ; we mean simply the soul in
all its aspects or faculties. Again, when in Heb. iv. 12, the Apostle
says that the word of God pierces so as to penetrate soul and spirit,
and the joints and marrow, he does not assume that soul and spirit
are different substances. The joints and marrow are not different
substances. They are both material ; they are different forms of the
same substance ; and so soul and spirit are one and the same substance
under different aspects or relations. We can say that the word of
God reaches not only to the feelings, but also to the conscience,
without assuming that the heart and conscience are distinct entities.
■ Much less is any such distinction implied in Phil. i. 27, " Stand
fast in one spirit Qv ivl Trrcu/zaTt), with one mind (/^ta •/'vxj})," There
is more difficulty in explaining 1 Cor. xv. 44. The Apostle there
distinguishes between the arwfjia if/v)(^LK6v and the a-wfjLa iruevfjiaTiKov ; the
former is that in which the i/'wx'? is the animating principle ; and the
latter that in which the irvev/xa is the principle of life. The one
we have here, the other we are to have hereafter. This seems to
imply that the i/'ux^; exists in "this life, but is not to exist hereafter,
and therefore that the two are separable and distinct. In this ex-
planation we might acquiesce if it did not contradict the general
representations of the Scriptures. We are constrained, therefore,
to seek another explanation which will harmonize with other por-
tions of the word of God. The general meaning of the Apostle is
plain. We have now gross, perishable, and dishonorable, or un-
sightly bodies. Hereafter we are to have glorious bodies, adapted
to a higher state of existence. The only question is, why does he
call the one psychical, and the other pneumatic ? Because the
word ^vxy, although often used for the soul as rational and im-
mortal, is also used for the lower form of life which belongs to irra-
tional animals. Our future bodies are not to be adapted to those
principles of our nature which we have in common with the brutes,
but to those which are peculiar to us as men, created in the image
of God. The same individual human soul has certain suscepti-
bilities and powers which adapt it to the present state of exist-
§3.] REALISM. 61
ence, and to the earthly house in which it now dwells. It has
animal appetites and necessities. It can hunger and thirst. It
needs sleep and rest. But the same soul has higher powers. The
earthly body is suited to its earthly state ; the heavenly body to
its heavenly state. There are not two substances i^^^x^ ^"d TrveS/xa,
there is but one and the same substance with different susceptibili-
ties and powers. In this same connection Paul says, Flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. Yet our bodies are
to inherit that kingdom, and our bodies are flesh and blood. The
same material substance now constituted as flesh and blood is to be
so changed as to be like Christ's glorious body. As this representa-
tion does not prove a substantial difference between the body which
now is and that which is to be hereafter, so neither does what the
Apostle says of the crw/Aa \pv)(LK6v and the o-tU/xa Tri/eu/xariKoj/ prove that
the ^^X"! ^"<^ TTvevfjia are distinct substances.
This doctrine of a threefold constitution of man being adopted
by Plato, was introduced partially into the early Church, but soon
came to be regarded as dangerous, if not heretical. Its being held
by the Gnostics that the TrvevfjLa in man was a part of the divine
essence, and incapable of sin ; and by the Apollinarlans that
Christ had only a human awy-a and ^vxy^ but not a human nvivfia,
the Church rejected the doctrine that the i/'^X'? ^"^ TrveC/xa were
distinct substances, since upon it those heresies were founded. In
later times tlie Semi-Pelagians taught that the soul and body, but
not the spirit in man were the subjects of original sin. All Prot-
estants, Lutheran and Reformed, were, therefore, the more zealous
in maintaining that the soul and spirit, ^vxn and 7rveDyu,a, are one and
the same substance and essence. And this, as before remarked,
has been the common doctrine of the Church.^
§ 3. Realism.
Its Greneral Character.
There is still another view of the nature of man which, from its
extensive and long-continued influence, demands consideration.
According to this view, man is defined to be, The manifestation of
the general principle of humanity in union with a given corporeal
organization. This view has been held in various forms wiiich
cannot here be severally discussed. It is only the theory in its more
general features, or in the form in which it has been commonly
presented, that our limits permit us to examine. It necessarily
1 See G. L. Hahn, Theohgie des N. T. Olshausen, De Trichotomia Naturm Humnnce, a
Novi Ttstnmenti Scriptoribas recepta. Ackermatin, Sludlen und Kriliken, 1839, p. 882.
J. T. Beck, Umriss d. bMischen Scdenlehre, 1843.
52 PART n. Ch. II.— nature of man.
assumes tliat humanity, human nature as a general principle or a
form of life, exists antecedently (either chronologically or logically)
to individual men. " In the order of nature," says Dr. Shedd,
" mankind exists before the generations of mankind ; the nature is
prior to the individuals produced out of it." ^ It exists, also, inde-
pendently and outside of them. As magnetism is a force in nature
existing antecedently, independently, and outside of any and all
individual magnets ; and as electricity exists independently of the
Leyden jars in which it may be collected or through which it is
manifested at present; as galvanism exists independently of any
and all galvanic batteries ; so humanity exists antecedently to indi-
vidual men and independently of them. As an individual magnet
is a given piece of soft iron in which the magnetic force is present
and active, and as a Leyden jar is simply a coated jar in which
electricity is present, so an individual man is a given corporeal
organization in which humanity as a general life or force is present.
To the question what is human nature, or humanity generically
considered, there are different answers given. It is said to be a
res^ an essence, a substance, a real objective existence. It is some-
thing which exists in time and space. This is the common mode
of statement. The controversy between realists and nominalists,
in its original and genuine form, turned upon this point. The
question which for ages occupied to so great an extent the attention
of all philosophers, was, What are universals ? What are genera
and species ? What are general terms ? Are they mere words ?
Are they thoughts or conceptions existing ni tne mind ? Are the
things expressed by general terms real objective existences? Do
individuals only exist ; so that species and genus are only classes of
individuals of the same kind ; or are mdividuals only the revelations
or individualizations of a general substance which is the species or
genus ? According to the early and genuine realists, and accord-
ing to the modern speculative philosophers, tlie species or genus is
first, independent of and external to the individual. The individual
is only " a subsequent modus existendi ; the first and antecedent
mode [in the case of man] being the generic humanity of which
this subsequent serial mode is only another aspect or manifestation."^
Precisely, as just stated, as magnetism is antecedent to the mag-
net. The magnet is only an individual piece of iron in and through
which generic magnetism is manifested. Thus the realist says,
"Etsi i-ationalitas non esset in aliquo, tamen in natura remaneret."®
1 History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 77.
2 Sliedd's Kssays. Boston, 1867, p. 259, note, and his History of Christi
ii. p. 117.
8 Cousin, FragmenU Phihsophiques, Paris, 1840, p. 167.
§ 3.] REALISM. 6S
Cousin quotes the complaint of Anselm against Roscelin and other
nominalists, " de ne pas comprendre comment plusieurs hommes
ne sont qu'un seul et meme homme, — nondum intelliget quomodo
plures homines in specie sint unus homo."^ The doctrine of his
" Monologium " and " Proslogium " and " Dialogus de veritate,"
Cousin says, is " que non-seulement il j a des individus humains,
mais qu'il y a en autre le genre humain, I'humanite, qui est une,
comme il admettait qu'il y a un temps absolu que les durees partic-
ulidres manifestent sans le constituer, une vdrite une et subsistante
par elle-meme, un type absolu du bien, que tons les biens particu-
liers supposent et r^fldchissent plus ou moins imparfaitement,"''
He quotes Abelard as stating the doctrine which he opposed, in
the following words : " Homo quaedam species est, res una essen-
tialiter, cui adveniunt formse qunedam et efficiunt Socratem : illam
eamdem essentialiter eodem modo informant form* facientes Plato-
nem et castera individua hominis ; nee aliquid est in Socrate, prjeter
illas formas informantes illam materiam ad faciendum Socratem,
quin illud idem eodem tempore in Platone informatum sit formis
Platonis. Et hoc intelligunt de singulis speciebus ad individua et
de generibus ad species." ^ According to one theory, " les individus
seuls existent et constituent I'essence des choses ; " according to
the other, " I'essence des individus est dans le genre auquel ils se
rapportent ; en tant qu' individus ils ne sont que des accidents."*
All this is sufficiently plain. That which constitutes the species or
genus is a real objective existence, a substance one and the same
numerically as well as specifically. This one general substance
exists in every individual belonging to the species, and constitutes
their essence. That which is peculiar to the individual, and which
distinguishes it from other individuals of the same species, is purely
accidental. This one sabstance of humanity, which is revealed or
manifested in all men, and which constitutes them men, "possesses
all the attributes of the human individual ; for the individual is only
a portion and specimen of the nature. Considered as an essence,
human nature is an intelligent, rational, and voluntary essence ;
and accordingly its agency in Adam partakes of the corresponding
qualities."^ "Agency," however, supposes "an agent ; and since
original sin is not the product of the individual agent, because it
appears at birth, it must be referred to the generic agent, —
i. e., to the human nature in distinction from the human perso7i or
individual." ^
I Cousin's Fragments Philosophiques, Paris, 1840, p. 146. 2 Jhidem.
3 Ibid. p. 167. 4 jbid. p. 171,
* Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 78. « Jbid. p. 80.
54 PART n. Ch. n.— nature of man.
Generic Humanity.
AVliat God created, therefore, was not an individual man, but
the species Jiomo^ or generic humanity, — an intelligent, rational,
and voluntar}^ essence ; individual men ai'e the manifestations of
this substance numerically and specifically one and the same, in
connection with their several corporeal organizations. Their souls
are not intlividual essences, but one common essence revealed and
acting in many separate organisms.
This answer to the question proposed above, What is human
nature generically considered, which makes it an essence or
substance common to all the individuals of the race, is the most
common and the most intelligible. Scientific men adopt a some-
what different phraseology. Instead of substances, they speak of
forces. Nature is defined to be the sum of the forces operating in
the external world. Oxygen is a force ; magnetism, electricity,
etc., are forces. " A species is ... . based on a specific amount
or condition of concentred force, defined in the act or law of crea-
tion." ^ Humanity, or human nature, is the sum of the forces
which constitute man what he is. The unity of the race consists
in the fact that these forces are numerically as well as specifically
the same in all the individuals of which it is composed.
The German theologians, paiticularly those of the .school of
Schleiermacher, use the terms life, law, and organic law. Human
nature is a generic life, i. e., a form of life manifested in a multi-
tude of individuals of the same kind. In the individual it is not
distinct or different from what it is in the genus. It is the same
organic law. A single oak may produce ten thousand other oaks ;
but the whole forest is as much an inward organic unity as any
single tree.
These may be convenient formulas to prevent the necessity of
circumlocutions, and to express a class of facts ; but they do not
convey any definite idea beyond the facts themselves. To say that
a whole forest of oaks have the same generic life, that they are as
truly one as any individual tree is one, means simply that the
nature is tiie same in all, and that all have been derived from a
common source. And to say that mankind are a unit because the}'
have the same generic life, and are all descended from a common
parent, either means nothing more than that all men are of the
same species, i. e., that humanity is specifically the same in all
mankind ; or it means all that is intended by those who teach that
1 Professor James D. Dana, Bibliutheca Sacra, 1857, p. 861.
§3.] REALISM. • 55
genera and species are substances of whicli the individual is the
mere modus existendi. As agency implies an agent, so force,
which is the manifestation of power, supposes something, a subject
or substance in which that power resides. Nothing, a nonentity,
can have no power and manifest no force. Force, of necessity,
supposes a substance of whicli it is the manifestation. If, therefore,
the forces are numerically the same, the substance must be numer-
ically the same. And, consequently, if humanity be a given amount
and kind of concentred force, numerically and not merely specifically
the same in all men, then are men o/^oowo-iot, partakers of one and the
same identical essence. The same remarks apply to the term life.
Life is a predicable, not an essence. It supposes a subject of
which it is predicable. There can be no life unless something
lives. It is not a thing by itself. If, therefore, the generic life of
man means anything more than the same kind of life, it must mean
that that which lives in all men is identically the same numerical
substance.
Objections to Realism.
According to the common doctrine, the soul of every man is
an individual subsistence, of the same kind but not of the same
numerical substance as the souls of his fellow-men, so that men
are 6/aoi-, but not ofx-oova-ioi. In support of this view and in opposi-
tion to the doctrine that " all men are one man," or, that human
nature is numerically one and the same essence of which individual
men are the modes of manifestation, it may be remarked, —
1. That the latter doctrine is a mere philosophical hypothesis. It
is a simple assumption founded on what is possible. It is possible
that the doctrine in question may be true. So in itself it is possible
that there should be an anima mundi, a principle of life immanent in
the world, of which all living organisms are the different manifesta-
tions ; so that all vegetables, all animals, and man himself, are but
different forms of one and the same numerical livins: substance :
just as the multitudinous waves of the sea in all their infinite
diversity of size, shape, and hue, are but the heavings of one and
the same vast ocean. In like manner it is possible that all the
forms of life should be only the various manifestations of the life of
God. This is not only possible, but it is such a simple and grand
idea that it has fascinated the minds of men in all ages, so that the
prevailing hypothesis of philosophers as to the constitution of the
universe has been, and still is, pantheistic. Nevertheless, pan-
»;heism is demonstrably false, because it contradicts the intuitive
convictions of our moral and religious nature. It is not enough.
66 PART II. Ch. n. — nature of man."
therefore, that a theory be possible or conceirable. It must have
the support of positive proof.
2. Such proof the doctrine under consideration does not find in
the Bible. It is simply a hypothesis on which certain facts of the
Scriptures may be explained. All men are alike ; they have the
same faculties, the same instincts and passions ; and they are all
born in sin. These and other similar facts admit of an easy
explanation on the assumption that humanity is numerically one
and the same substance of which individuals are only so many
different manifestations ; just as a thousand different magnets
reveal the magnetic force which is the same in all, and therefore
all magnets are alike. But as the facts referred to may be explained
on divers other assumptions, they afford no proof of this particular
theory. It is not pretended that the Bible dii*ectly teaches the
doctrine in question. Nor does it teach anything which necessitates
its adoption. On the contrary, it teaches much that is irrecon-
cilable with it.
Not Supported hy Consciousness.
3. The hypothesis under consideration derives no support from
consciousness. We are conscious of our own existence. We are
(in one sense) conscious of the existence of other men. But we
are not conscious of a community of essence in ourselves and all
other men. So far from this being the common interpretation
which men put on their consciousness, it is diametrically opposed
to it.- Every man believes his soul to be a distinct, individual
substance, as much as he believes his body to be distinct and sep-
arate from every other human body. Such is the common judgment
of men. And nothing short of the direct assertion of the Bible,
or arguments which amount to demonstration, can rationally be
admitted to invalidate that judgment. It is inconceivable that
anything concerning the constitution of our nature so momentous
in its consequences, should be true, which does not in some way
reveal itself in the common consciousness of men. There is nothing
more characteristic of the Scriptures, and there are few things
which more clearly prove its divine origin, than that it takes for
granted and authenticates all the facts of consciousness. It declares
us to be what we are revealed to ourselves as being in the very
constitution and present condition of our nature. It recognizes
the soul as rational, free, and responsible. It assumes that it is
distinct from the body. All this we know from consciousness.
But we do not know that the essence or substance of our soul is
numerically the same as the substance of the souls of all men. If
§ 3.] REALISM. 57
the Bible teaches any such doctrine it teaches something outside
of the teachings of consciousness, and something to which those
teachings, in the judgment of the vast majority of men, even the
most enhghtened, are directly opposed.
Realism Contrary to the Teachings of Scripture.
4. The Scriptures not only dp not teach the doctrine in
question, but they also teach what is inconsistent with it. We
have already seen that it is a clearly revealed doctrine of the Bible,
and part of the faith of the Church universal, that the soul contin-
ues to exist after death as a self-conscious, individual person. This
fact is inconsistent with the theory in question. A given plant is a
material organization, animated by the general principle of vegetable
life. If the plant is destroyed the principle of vegetable life no
longer exists as to that plant. It may exist in other plants ; but that
particular plant ceased to exist when the material organization was
dissolved. Magnetism continues to exist as a force in nature, but
any particular magnet ceases to be when it is melted, or volatilized.
In like manner, if a man is the manifestation of a generic life, or
of humanity as an essence common to all men, then when his body
dies the man ceases to exist. Humanity continues to be, but
the individual man no longer exists. This is a difficulty which
some of the advocates of this theory endeavour to avoid* by giving
up what is essential to their own docti'ine. Its genuine and con-
sistent advocates admit it in its full force. The anti-Christian
portion of them acknowledge that their doctrine is inconsistent
with the personal immortality of man. The race, they say, is
immortal, but individual men are not. The same conclusion is
admitted by those who hold the analogous pantheistic, or naturalistic
doctrines. If a man is only the modus existendi, a form in which a
common substance or life reveals itself, it matters not whether that
substance be humanity, nature, or God, when the form, the material
organism, is destroyed, the man as a man ceases to exist. Those
advocates of the doctrine who cling to Christianity, while they
admit the difficulty, endeavour to get over it in diffiirent ways.
Schleiermacher admits that all philosophy is against the doctrine
of the personal existence of man in a future state. His whole sys-
tem leads to the denial of it. But he says that the Christian must
admit it on the authority of Christ. Olshausen, in his commentary
on the New Testament, says, when explaining 1 Cor. xv. 19, 20,
and verses 42-44, that the Bible knows nothing of the immortality
of the soul. He pronounces it to be a heathen idea. A soul with-
58 PART II. Ch. II.— nature OF MAN.
out a body loses its individuality. It ceases to be a person, and of
course loses self-consciousness and all that is connected with it. As,
however, the Scriptures teach that men are to exist hereafter, he
says their bodies must also continue to exist, and the only existence
of the soul during the interval between death and the resurrection,
■which he admits, is in connection ({. e., vital union) with the disin-
tegrated particles of the body in the grave or scattered to the ends
of the earth. This is a conclusion to which his doctrine legiti-
mately leads, and which he is sufficiently candid to admit. Dr.
Nevin, a disciple of Schleiermacher, has to grapple with the same
difficulty. His book entitled " The Mystical Presence," is the
clearest and ablest exposition of the theology of Schleiermacher
which has appeared in our language, unless Morell's " Philosophy
of Religion " be its equal. He denies ^ all dualism between the
soul and body. They are " one life." The one cannot exist
without the other. He admits that what the Bible teaches of the
separate existence of the soul between death and the resurrection,
is a difficulty " which it is not easy, at present, to solve." He
does nut attempt to solve it. He only says that the difficulty is
" not to reconcile Scripture with a psychological theory, but to
bring it into harmony with itself." This is no solution. It is a
virtual admission that he cannot reconcile the Bible with his psy-
chological ■ theory. The doctrine that man is a modus existendi of
a generic humanity, or the manifestation of the general principle
of humanity, in connection with a given corporeal organization, is
inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the separate existence
of the soul, and therefore must be false.
Inconsistent with the Doctrine of the Trinity.
5. This theory is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the
Trinity. It necessitates the conclusion that the Father, Son, and
Spirit are no more one God than Peter, James, and John are
one man. The persons of the Trinity are one God, because the
Godhead is one essence ; but if humanity be one essence numeri-
cally the same in all men, then all men are one man in the same
sense that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God. This is a
reductio ad ahsurdum. It is clearly taught in Scripture and uni-
versally believed in the Church that the persons of the Trinity
are one God in an infinitely higher sense than that in which all
men are one man. The precise diffi?rence is, that the essence
common to the j^ersons of the Godhead is numerically the same ;
1 Page 171.
§3.] REALISM. 59
whereas the essence common to all men is only specifically the
same, i. e., of the same kind, although numerically different. The
theory which leads to the opposite conclusion must therefore be false.
It cannot be true that all mankind are one essence, substance, or
organic life, existing or manifesting itself in a multitude of individ-
ual persons. This is a difficulty so obvious and so fatal that it could
not fail to arrest the attention of realists in all ages and of every
class. The great point of dispute in the Council of Nice between
the Arians and orthodox was, whether the persons of the Trinity
are ofxoi- or ofjioova-toL, of a like or of the same essence. If 6/xoovcrioi,
it was on both sides admitted that they are one God ; because if
the same in substance they are equal in power and glory. Now it
is expressly asserted that all men are not ofx-oc- but oixoovaLoi, and
therefore, by parity of reasoning, they must constitute one man in
the same sense as there is one God, and all be equal in every attri-
bute of their nature.^ Of course it is admitted that there is a
legitimate sense of the word in which all men may be said to be
6fj.oov(TLoi, when by 6/aos (jame^ is meant similar, or of a like kind.
In this sense the Greeks said that the bodies of men and of other
animals were consubstantial, as all were made of flesh ; and that
angels, demons, and human souls, as spiritual beings, are also
o/xooxjo-tot. But this is not the sense in which the word is used by
realists, when speaking either of the persons of the Trinity or of
men. In both cases the word same means numerical oneness ;
men are of the same numerical essence in the same sense in which
the Father and the Son and the Spirit are the same in substance.
The difference, it is said, between the two cases does not relate to
identity of essence, which is the same in both, but is found in this,
that " the whole nature or essence is in the divine person ; but the
human person is only a part of the common human nature. Gen-
eration in the Godhead admits no abscission or division of substance ;
but generation in the instance of the creature implies separation or
division of essence. A human person is an individualized portion
of humanity."^ It must, however, be remembered that humanity
is declared to be a spiritual substance. It is the same in nature
with the soul, which is called an individualized portion of human
nature, possessing consciousness, reason, and will. But, if spirit-
ual, it is indivisible. Divisibility is one of the primary properties
of matter. Whatever Is divisible is material. If therefore human-
ity, as a generic substance, admits of " abscission and division," it
1 See History of Cliristian Doctrine, by Dr. Shedd, vol. ii. p. 120.
2 Jbid. vol. i. p. .343, no(e.
60 PART II. Ch. n. — nature of man.
must be material. A part of reason, a piece of consciousness, or
a fra£;ment of will, are contradictory, or unintelligible forms of
expression. If humanity is of the same essence as the soul, it no
more admits of division than the soul. One part of a soul cannot
be holy and another unholy ; one part saved and the other lost.
The objection to the theory under consideration, that it makes the
relation between individual men identical with that between the
persons of the Trinity, remains, therefore, in full force. It is not
met by the answer just referred to, which answer supposes mind to
be extended and divisible.
Realism Inconsistent with what the Bible teaches of the Person and
Work of Christ.
6. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the doctrine in
question with what the Scriptures teach of the person and work of
Christ. According to the Bible, the Son of God became man by
taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. According
to the realistic doctrine, he did not assume a reasonable soul, but
generic humanity. What is this but the whole of humanity, of
which, according to the advocates of this doctrine, individual men
are the portions. Human nature as a generic life, humanity as a
substance, and a whole substance, was taken into personal union
with the Son of God. The Logos became incarnate in the race.
This is certainly not the Scriptural doctrine. The Son of God
became a man ; not all men. He assumed an individual rational
soul, not the general principle of humanity. Besides this, it is the
doctrine of those who adopt this theory that humanity sinned and
fell in Adam. The rational, moral, voluntary substance called
human nature, is, or at least was, an agent. The sin of Adam was
the sin not of an individual, but of this generic substance, which
by that sin became the subject both of guilt and of depravity. By
reason of this sin of human nature, the theory is, that all individual
men, in their successive generations, in whom this nature is revealed,
or in whom, as they express it, it is individualized, came into the
world in a state of guilt and pollution. We do not now refer to the
numerous and serious difficulties connected with this theory as a
method of accounting for original sin. We speak of it only in its
relation to Christ's person. If human nature, as a generic life, a
substance of which all men partake, became both guilty and pol-
luted by the apostasy ; and that generic humanity, as distinguished
from a newly created and holv rational soul, was assumed by the
Son of God, how can we avoid the conclusion that Clulst was, in
§4.] ANOTHER FORM OF REALISM. 61
his human nature, personally guilty and sinful ? This is a legiti-
mate consequence of this theory. And this consequence being not
only false but blasphemous, the theory itself must be false. As
the principle that humanity is one substance, and all men are
o/xoouortot ill the sense of partaking of the same numerical essence,
involves consequences destructive of the Scriptural doctrines of the
Trinity and of the person of Christ, so it might easily be shown
that it overthrows the common faith of the Protestant churches on
the doctrines of justification, regeneration, the sacraments, and the
Church. It is enough for our present purpose to remark that,
as a historical fact, the consistent and thorough-going advocates
of this doctrine do teach an entirely different method of salvation.
Many men adopt a principle, and do not carry it out to its legitimate
consequences. But others, more logical, or more reckless, do not
hesitate to embrace all its results. In the works of Morell and of
Dr. Nevin, above referred to, the theological student may find a
fearless pressing of the genuine principle of realism, to the utter
overthrow of the Protestant, and, it may be added, of the Christian
faith.
7. Other objections to this theory may be more appropriately
considered when we come to speak of the several doctrines to
which it is applied. It is sufficient in the conclusion of the present
discussion to say that what is said to be true of the genus homo, is
assumed to be true of all genera and species in the animal and veg-
etable worlds. The individual in all cases is assumed to be only the
manifestation or modus existendi of the generic substance. Thus
there is a bovine, an equine, and a feline substance, having an ob-
jective existence of which all oxen, all horses, and all animals of
the cat-race, are the manifestations. And so of all species, whether
of plants or animals. This is almost inconceivable. Compared
to this theory, the assumption of a naturgeist, or anima mundi, or
of one universal substance, is simplicity itself. That such a theory
should be set forth and made the foundation, or rather the con-
trolling principle of all Christian doctrines, is most unreasonable
and dangerous. This realistic doctine, until recently, has been as
much exploded as the eternal ideas of Plato or the forms of Aris-
totle.
§ 4. Another form of the Realistic Theory.
There is, however, another phase of this doctrine, which it is
necessary to mention. The doctrine that genera and species are
real substances existing prior to individuals, and independent of
them, is the old, genuine, and most intelligible form of Realism.
62 PART II. Ch. it. — nature OF MAN.
It was expressed in the schools by saying that Universalia are anti'
rem. Tiie other form of the doctrine asserts that the Universalia
are in re. That is that the universals exist only in the individuals ;
and that the individuals alone are real. " L'identite des individus,"
says Cousin ^ in his exposition of this form of the doctrine, " d'un
meme genre ne vient pas de leur essence meme, car cette essence
est diffdrente en chacun d'eux, niais de certains dldments qui se
retrouvent dans tous ces individus sans aucune diffdrence, indiffer-
enter. Cette nouvelle theorie differe de la premiere en ce que les
universaux ne sont plus I'essence de I'etre, la substance meme des
choses ; mais elle s'en rapproche en ce que les universaux existent
reellement, et qu'existant dans plusieurs individus sans diflPerence?
ils forment leur identite et par la leur genre." Again, ^ he says,
" Le principe de la nouvelle thdorie est que I'essence de chaque
chose est leur individuality, que les individus seuls existent, etqu'il
n'y a point en dehors des individus d'essence appelees les universaux,
les especes et les genres ; mais que I'individu lui-meme contient
tout cela, selon les divers points de vue sous lequels on le considere."^
Thus Socrates as an individual man has his own essence, which,
with its peculiarities, makes him Socrates. Neglect those pecidiar-
ities and consider him as rational and mortal, then you have the
idea of species ; neglect rationality and mortality, and consider
him as an animal, then you have the idea of the genus ; neglect all
these forms (" relictis omnibus formis"), and you have oidy the idea
of substance. According to this view " les especes et les genres,
les plus elevds comme les plus infdrieurs, sont les individus eux-
memes, considdrds sous divers point de vue." * This, according to
the plain sense of the terms, amounts to the common doctrine. In-
dividuals alone exist. Certain individuals have some distinguish-
ing properties or attributes in common. They constitute a par-
ticular species. These and other individuals of different species
have other properties common to them all, and they constitute a
genus, and so orders, and classes, until we get to the highest cate-
gory of being, which includes all. But if all beings are assumed
to be one substance, which substance with certain added qualities
or accidents constitutes a class, with certain other additions, an
order, with still further modifications, a genus, a species, an indi-
vidual, then we have the old theory back again, only extended so
as to have a pantheistic aspect.
1 Fraffvients PhUosoplilques, p. 162. ^ Jbid, p. 168.
8 See the exposition by Ab^lard himself quoted on page 170 of Cousin.
* Cousin, Fracjmtnts Philosophiques, p. 183.
§4.] ANOTHER FORM OF REALISM. 63
Some scientific men, instead of defining species as a group of in-
dividuals having certain characteristics in common, say with Pro-
fessor Dana, that it " corresponds to the specific amount or con-
dition of concentred force, defined in the act or law of creation ;"
or with Dr. Morton, that it is " a primordial organic form ; " or
with Agassiz, that it is an original immaterial principle which de-
termines the form or characteristics of the individuals constituting a
distinct group. These are only different modes of accounting for
the fact that all the individuals of a given species have certain char-
acteristics or fundamental qualities in common. To such state-
ments there is no objection. But when it is assumed that these
original primordial forms, as in the case of humanity, for exam-
ple, are by the law of propagation transmitted from generation to
generation, so as to constitute all the individuals of the species
essentially one, that is, one in essence or substance, so that the act
of the first individual of the species (of Adam, for example) be-
ing the act of the substance numerically the same in all the mem-
bers of that species, is the act of each individual member, then
something essentially new is added to the above given scientific
definition of species, and we return to the original and genuine
form of Realism in its most offensive features. It would be easy
to show, (1st.) that generation or the law of propagation both in
plants and in animals is absolutely inscrutable ; as much so as the
nature of matter, mind, or life, in themselves considered. We can
no more tell what generation is, than what matter is, or what mind
is. (2d.) That it is therefore unreasonable and dangerous to make
a given theory as to the nature of generation or the law of propa-
gation the basis for the explanation of Christian doctrines. (3d.)
That whatever may be the secret and inscrutable process of propa-
gation, it does not involve the transmission of the same numerical
essence, so that a progenitor and his descendants are one and the
same substance. This assumption is liable to all the objections
already urged against the original form of the realistic doctrine.
The theory is moreover destitute of all evidence either fi-om expe-
rience or analogy. There is no conceivable sense in which all the
oaks now on the earth are identical as to their substance with the
oaks originally created. And there is no conceivable sense in
which we and all mankind are identically the same substance with
Adam. If a thousand candles are successively lighted from one
candle tht'y do not thereby become one candle. There is not a
communication of the substance of the first to the second, and of
the second to the others in their order, so as to make it in any
64 PART n. Ch. n.— nature of man.
sense true that the substance of the first is numerically the same
with that of all the others. The simple fact is that by the laws of
matter ordained by God, the state in which a lighted candle is, pro-
duces certain changes or movements in the constituent elements of
the wick of another candle when the two are brought into contact,
which movements induce other movements in the constituent parti-
cles of the surrounding atmosphere, which are connected with the
evolution of light and heat. But there is no communication of
substance involved in the process. An acorn which falls from an
oak to-day, is composed not of the same particles of matter from
which the original acorn was formed, but of matter of the same
kind, and arranged in the same way. It may be said to be im-
bued with chemical and vital forces of the same kind with the
original acorn, but not with numerically the same forces. So of
all plants and animals. We are of the same nature with Adam
in the same sense that all animals of one species are the same.
The sameness does not consist in numencal identity of essence or
of vital forces, or of reason or will, but in the sameness of kind
and community of origin.
Besides the origin and the nature of man, there are tM^o other
questions, which are more or less involved in what the Scriptures
teach concerning mankind, and which demand attention before we
turn to the moral and religious condition of the race. The first of
these concerns the Origin of the Soul, and the second the Unity of
the Race.
CHAPTER III.
THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL.
§ 1. Theory of Preexistence.
Three theories have been advanced as to the origin of the soul.
First, that of the Preexistence of the soul ; secondly, that of Tra-
duction, or the doctrine that the soul of the child is derived from
the soul of the parent ; thirdly, that of immediate Creation, or the
doctrine that the soul is not derived as the body is, but owes its
existence to the creative power of God,
The doctrine of the preexistence of the soul has been presented
in two forms. Plato held that ideas are eternal in the divine mind ;
that these ideas are not mere thoughts, but living entities ; that
they constitute the essence and life of all external things ; the
universe and all it contains are these ideas realized, clothed in
matter, and developed in history. There was thus an ideal, or in-
telligible world, anterior to the world as actually existing in time.
What Plato called ideas, Aristotle called forms. He denied that
the ideal was antei'ior to the actual. Matter is eternal, and all
things consist of matter and form — by form being meant that
which gives character, or determines the nature of individual
things. As in other respects, so also in this, the Platonic, or
Aristo-Platonic philosophy, had much influence on Christian The-
ology. And some of the fathers and of the schoolmen approached
more or less nearly to this doctrine of the preexistence, not only of
the soul, but of all things in this ideal world. St. Bernard, in
his strenuous opposition to nominalism, adopted the Platonic doc-
trine of ideas, which he identified with genera and species. These
ideas, he taught, were eternal, although posterior to God, as an
effect is in the order of nature after its cause. Providence applies
the idea to matter, which becomes animated and takes form, and thus
("du monde intelligible est sorti le monde sensible ") "ex mundo
intelligibili muudus sensibilis perfectus natus est ex perfecto." ^
Among modern writers, Delitzsch comes nearest to this Platonic
doctrine. He says, " Es giebt nach der Schrift eine Priiexistenz
1 Cousin, Fragments Philosophiques, pp. 172-176.
VOL. II. 5
fiB PART II. Cii. ni. — ORIGIN OF THE SOUL.
des Meiisclien und zwar elne ideale ; . . . . eine Priiexistenz ....
vermdge welcher Mensch und Mensclilieit nicht bios eiii fenizu-
kiinftiges Object gottliclier Voraussicht, sondeiu ein gegenwiirtiges
Object gottlicher Anschauung sind im Spiegel derWeisheit
Nicht bios Philosopliie and falschberiihmte Gnosis, sondern auch die
Sclirift weiss und spricht von einer gottlichen Idealwelt, zu welcher
sich die Zeitwelt wie die geschichtliche Verwirklichuno; eines
ewio-en Grundrisses verhalt.^ That is, " There is accordino; to the
Scriptures, an ideal preexistence of man ; a preexistence in virtue
of which man and humanity are contemplated by the divine om-
niscience not merely as objects lying far off in the future, but as
present in the mirror of his wisdom. Not only philosophy and
the so called Gnosis, but also the Scriptures recognize and avow a
divine ideal world to which the actual world stands related as the
historical development of an eternal conception." It is doubtful,
however, whether Delitzsch meant much more by this than that the
omniscience of God embraces from eternity the knowledge of all
things possible, and that his purpose determined from eternity the
futurition of all actual events, so that his decree or plan as existing
in the divine mind is realized in the external world and its history.
The mechanist has in his mind a clear conception of the machine
which he is about to make. But it is on]y by a figure of speech
that the machine can be said to preexist in the artist's mind. This
is very different from the Platonic and Realistic theory of preexist-
ence.
Origen's Doctrine.
Preexistence, as taught by Origen, and as adopted here and
there by some few philosophers and theologians, is not the Platonic
doctrine of an ideal-world. It supposes that the souls of men had
a separate, conscious, personal existence in a previous state ; that
having sinned in that preexistent state, they are condemned to be
born into this world in a state of sin and in connection with a
material body. This doctrine was connected by Origen with his
theory of an eternal creation. The present state of being is only
one epoch in the existence of the human soul. It has passed
through innumerable other epochs and forms of existence in the
past, and is to go through other innumerable such epochs in
the future. He held to a metempsychosis very similar to that
taught by Orientals both ancient and modern. But even without
the encumbrance of this idea of the endless transmutation of the
soul, the doctrine itself has never been adopted in the Church. It
1 Biblische Psychologie, p. 23.
§1.] THEORY OF PREEXISTENCE. 67
may be said to have begun and ended with Origen, as it was
rejected both by the Greeks and Latins, and has only been advo-
cated by individual writers from that day to this. It does not pre-
tend to be a Scriptural doctrine, and therefore cannot be an object
of faith. The Bible never speaks of a creation of men before
Adam, or of any apostasy anterior to his fall, and it never refers
the sinfulness of our present condition to any higher source than
the sin of our first parent. The assumption that all human souls
were created at the same time that the soul of Adam was created,
and remain in a dormant, unconscious state until united to the
bodies for which they were designed, has been adopted by so few
as hardly to merit a place in the history of theological opinion.
It is a far more important question, whether the soul of each
man is immediately created, or, whether it is generated by the
parents. The former is known, in theology, as "Creationism," the
latter as " Traducianism." The Greek Church from the first took
ground in favour of creationism as alone consistent with the true
nature of the soul. Tertullian in the Latin Church was almost a
materialist, at least he used the language of materialism, and held
that the soul was as much begotten as the body. Jerome opposed
that doctrine. Augustine was also very adverse to it ; but in his
controversy with Pelagius on the propagation of sin, he was
tempted to favour the theory of traduction as affording an easier
explanation of the fact that we derive a corrupt nature from Adam.
He never, however, could bring himself fully to adopt it. Cre-
ationism became subsequently the almost universally received doc-
trine of the Latin, as it had always been of the Greek, Church.
At the time of the Reformation the Protestants as a body adhered
to the same view. Even the Form of Concord, the authoritative
symbol of the Lutheran Church, favours creationism. The body
of the Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century, however,
adopted the theory of traduction. Among the Reformed the
reverse was true. Calvin, Beza, Turrettin, and the great majority
of the Reformed theologians were creationists, only here and there
one adopted the ex traduce theory. In modern times discussion on
this point has been renewed. Many of the recent German theo-
logians, and such as are inclined to realism in any form, have
become more or less zealously the advocates of traducianism.
This, however, is far from being the universal opinion of the Ger-
mans. Perhaps the majority of the German philosophers agree
with Giinther : ^ " Traducianism has its functions in respect to the
1 Viivschule der Speculativen Theologie, vol. ii. 181.
68 PART I. Ch. m. — origin of the soul.
animal life of man ; on the other hand, the province of Creation-
ism is with the soul ; and it would travel out of its province if it
extended the immediate creative action of God to that animal life,
which is the principle of his body's existence." ^
§ 2. Traducianism.
I What is meant by the term traduction is in general sufficiently
clear from the signification of the word. Traducianists on the one
hand deny that the soul is created ; and on the other hand, they
affirm that it is produced by the law of generation, being as truly
derived from the parents as the body. The whole man, soul and
, body, is begotten. The whole man is derived from the substance
of his progenitors. Some go further than others in their assertions
on this subject. Some affirm that the soul is susceptible of " ab-
scission and division," so that a portion of the soul of the parents
is communicated to the child. Others shrink from such ex-
pressions, and yet maintain that there is a true derivation of the
one from the other. Both classes, however, insist on the numer-
ical identity of essence in Adam and all his posterity both as to
soul and as to body. The more enlightened and candid advocates
of traducianism admit that the Scriptures are silent on the subject.
Augustine had said the same thing a thousand years ago. " De
re obscurissima disputatur, non adjuvantibus divinarum scriptura-
rum certis clarisque documentis." The passages cited in support
of the doctrine teach nothing decisive on the subject. That Adam
begat a son in his own likeness, and after his own image, and called
his name Seth, only asserts that Seth was like his father. It sheds
no light on the mysterious process of generation, and does not
teach how the likeness of the child to the parent is secured by
physical causes. When Job asks, " Who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean ? " and when our Lord says, " That which is
born of the flesh is flesh," the fact is asserted that like begets like ;
that a corrupt nature is transmitted from parent to child. But
that this can be done only by the transmission of numerically the
same substance is a gratuitous assumption. More stress is laid on
certain facts of Scripture which are assumed to favour this theory.
That in the creation of the woman no mention is made of God's
having breathed into her the breath of life, is said to imply that
her soul as well as her body was derived from Adam. Silence,
however, proves nothing. In Gen. i. 27, it is simply said, ''• God
created man in his own image," just as it is said that He created
1 Wilberforce On the Incarnation, p. 47.
§ 2.] TRADUCIANISM. 69
" every creeping thing tliat creepeth upon the earth." Nothing
is there said of his breathing into man the breath of life, i. e., a
principle of rational life. Yet we know that it was done. Its not
being expressly mentioned in the case of Eve, therefore, is no
proof that it did not occur. Again, it is said, that God's resting
on the Sabbath, implies that his creating energy was not after-
wards exerted. This is understood to draw the line between the
immediate creation and the production of effects in nature by
second causes under the providential control of God. The doc-
trine of creationism, on the other hand, assumes that God con-
stantly, now as well as at the beginning, exercises his immediate
agency in producing something out of nothing. But, in the first
place, we do not know how the agency of God is connected with
the operation of second causes, how far that agency is mediate,
and how far it is immediate ; and in the second place, we do know
that God has not bound himself to mere providential direction ;
that his omnipresent power is ever operating through means and
without means in the whole sphere of history and of nature. Of
all arguments in favor of traducianism the most effective is that
derived from the transmission of a sinful nature from Adam to his
posterity. It is insisted that this can neither be explained nor jus-
tified unless we assume that Adam's sin was our sin and our guilt,
and that the identical active, intelligent, voluntary substance which
transgressed in him, has been transmitted to us. This is an
argument which can be fully considered only when we come to
treat of original sin. For the present it is enough to repeat the
remark just made, that the fact is one thing and the explanation
of the fact is another thing. The fact is admitted that the sin of
Adam in a true and important sense is our sin, — and that we de-
rive from him a corrupt nature ; but that this necessitates the
adoption of the ex traduce doctrine as to the origin of the soul, is
not so clear. It has been denied by the vast majority of the most
strenuous defenders of the doctrine of original sin, in all ages of
the Church. To call creationism a Pelagian principle is only an
evidence of ignorance. Again, it is urged that the doctrine of the
incarnation necessarily involves the truth of the ex traduce theory.
Christ was born of a woman. He was the seed of the woman.
Unless both as to soul and body derived from his human mother,
it is said, He cannot truly be of the same race with us. The
Lutheran theologians, therefore, say : " Si Christus non assumjisis-
set animam ab anima Marias, animam humanam non redemisset.^
This, however, is a simple non sequitur. All that is necessary is
70 PART IL Ch. m.— ORIGIN^ OF THE SOUL.
tliat Christ should be a man, a son of David, in the same sense
as any other of the posterity of David, save only his miraculous
conception. He was formed ex suhstantia matris suce in the
same sense in which every child born of a woman is born of her
substance, but what that sense is, his birth does not determine.
The most plausible argument in favour of traducianism is the
undeniable fact of the transmission of the ethnical, national,
family, and even parental, peculiarities of mind and temper.
This seems to evince that there is a derivation not only of the
body but also of the soul in which these peculiarities inhere. But
even this argument is not conclusive, because it is impossible for
us to determine to what proximate cause these peculiarities are
due. They may all be referred, for what we know, to something
peculiar in the physical constitution. Tiiat the mind is greatly
influenced by the body cannot be denied. And a body having the
physical peculiarities belonging to any race, nation, or family, may
determine within certain limits the character of the soul.
§ 3. Creationism.
The common doctrine of the Church, and especially of the
Reformed theologians, lias ever been that the soul of the child is
not generated or derived from the parents, but that it is created
by the immediate agency of God, The arguments generally urged
in favour of this view are, —
1. That it is more consistent with the prevailing representations
of the Scriptures. In the original account of the creation there is
a marked distinction made between the body and the soul. The
one is from the earth, the other from God. This distinction is
kept up throughout the Bible. The body and soul are not only
represented as different substances, but also as having different
origins. The body shall return to dust, says the wise man, and
the spirit to God who gave it. Here the origin of the soul is
represented as different from and higher than that of the body.
The former is from God in a sense in which the latter is not. In
like manner God is said to form " the spirit of man within him "
(Zech. xii. 1) ; to give " breath unto the people upon " the earth,
" and spirit to them that walk therein." (Is. xlii. 5.) This
language nearly agrees with the account of the original creation,
in which God is said to have breathed into man the breath of life,
to indicate that the soul is not earthy or material, but had its origin
immediately from God. Hence He is called " God of the spirits of
all flesh." (Num. xvi. 22.) It could not well be said that He is
§3.] CREATIONISM. 71
God of the bodies of all men. The relation in which the soul stands
to God as its God and creator is very different from that in which
the body stands to Him. And hence in Heb. xii. 9, it is said,
" We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we
gave them reverence : shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the Father of spirits, and live ? " The obvious antithesis here
presented is between those who are the fathers of our bodies and
Him who is the Father of our spirits. Our bodies are derived from
our earthly parents, our souls ai'e derived from God. This is ^
in accordance with the familiar use of the word flesh, Avhere it is
contrasted, either expressly or by implication, with the soul. Paul
speaks of those who had not " seen his face in the flesh," of " the
life he now lived in the flesh." He tells the Philippians that it
was needful for them that he should remain " in the flesh ; " he
speaks of his " mortal flesh." The Psalmist says of the Messiah,
" my flesh shall rest in hope," which the Apostle explains to mean
that his flesh should not see corruption. In all these, and in a
multitude of similar passages, flesh means the body, and "fathers
of our flesh " means fathers of our bodies. So far, thei-efore, as
the Scriptures reveal anything on the subject, their authority is
against tradacianism and in favour of creationism.
Argument from the Nature of the Soul.
2. The latter doctrine, also, is clearly most consistent with the
nature of the soul. The soul is admitted, among Christians, to be
immaterial and spiritual. It is indivisible. The traducian doctrine
denies this universally acknowledged truth. It asserts that the
soul admits of "separation or division of essence."-^ On the same
ground that the Church universally rejected the Gnostic doctrine
of emanation as inconsistent with the nature of God as a spirit, it
has, with nearly the same unanimity, rejected the doctrine that the
soul admits of division of substance. This is so serious a difficulty
that some of the advocates of the ex traduce doctrine endeavour to
avoid it by denying that their theory assumes any such separation
or division of the substance of the soul. But this denial avails little.
They maintain that the same numerical essence which constituted
the soul of Adam constitutes our souls. If this be so, then either
humanity is a general essence of which individual men are the
modes of existence, or what was wholly in Adam is distributively,
partitively, and by separation, in the multitude of his descendants.
Derivation of essence, therefore, does imply, and is generally
1 Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine, vol. i. p. 343, note.
72 PART n. ch. ni. — origin of the soul.
admitted to imply, separation or division of essence. And this must
be so if numerical identity of essence in all mankind is assumed to
be secured by generation or propagation.
3. A third argument in favour of creationism and against tra-
ducianism is derived from the Scriptural doctrine as to the person
of Christ. He was very man ; He had a true human nature ; a
true body and a rational soul. He was born of a woman. He
was, as to his flesh, the son of David. He was descended from the
fathers. He was in all points made like as we are, yet without
sin. This is admitted on both sides. But, as before remarked in
reference to realism, this, on the theory of traducianism, necessitates
the conclusion that Christ's human nature was guilty and sinful.
We are partakers of Adam's sin both as to guilt and pollution,
because the same numerical essence which sinned in him is com-
municated to us. Sin, it is said, is an accident, and supposes a
substance in which it inheres, or to which it pertains. Community
in sin supposes, therefore, community of essence. If we were not
in Adam as to essence we did not sin in him, and do not derive a
corrupt nature from him. But, if we were in him as to essence
then his sin was our sin both as to guilt and pollution. This is the
argument of traducianists repeated in every form. But they insist
that Christ was in Adam as to the substance of his human nature
as truly as we were. Tiiey say that if his body and soul were not
derived from the body and soul of his virgin mother he was no true
man, and cannot be the redeemer of men. What is true of other
men must, consequently, be true of Him. He must, therefore, be
as much involved in the guilt and corruption of the apostasy as
other men. It will not do to affirm and deny the same thing. It
is a contradiction to say that we are guilty of Adam's sin because
we are partakers of his essence, and that Christ is not guilty of
his sin nor involved in its pollution, although He is a partaker of
his essence. If participation of essence involve community of guilt
and depravity in the one case, it must also in the other. As this
seems a legitimate conclusion from the traducian doctrine, and as
this conclusion is anti-Christian, and false, the doctrine itself cannot
be true.
§ 4. Concluding Remarks.
Such are the leading arguments on both sides of this question.
In reference to this discussion it may be remarked, —
1. That while it is incumbent on us strenuously to resist any
doctrine which assumes the divisibility, and consequent materiality,
of the human soul, or which leads to the conclusion that the human
§4.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 73
natui'e of our blessed Lord was contaminated with sin, yet it does
not become us to be wise above that which is written. We may
confess that generation, the production of a new individual of the
human race, is an inscrutable mystery. But this must be said of the
transmission of life in all its forms. If theologians and philosophers
would content themselves with simply denying the creation of the
soul ex nihilo, without insisting on the division of the substance of
the soul or the identity of essence in all human beings, the evil
would not be so great. Some do attempt to be thus moderate, and
say, with Frohschammer,^ " Gfenerare is nicht ein traducere, sondern
ein secundares, ein creatUrliches creare.'^ They avail themselves
of the analogy often referred to, " cum flamma accendit flammara,
neque tota flamma accendens transit in accensam neque pars ejus in
eam descendit : ita anima parentum generat animam filii, ei nihil de-
cedat." It must be confessed, however, that in this view the theory
loses all its value as a means of explaining the propagation of sin.
2. It is obviously most unreasonable and presumptuous, as well
as dangerous, to make a theory as to the origin of the soul the
ground of a doctrine so fundamental to the Christian system as that
of original sin. Yet we see theologians, ancient and modern, boldly
asserting that if their doctrine of derivation, and the consequent
numerical sameness of substance in all men, be not admitted, then
original sin is impossible. That is, that nothing can be true, no
matter how plainly taught in the word of God, which they cannot
explain. This is done even by those who protest against introducing
philosophy into theology, utterly unconscious, as it would seem,
that they themselves occupy, quoad hoc, the same ground with the
rationalists. They will not believe in hereditary depravity unless
they can explain the mode of its transmission. There can be nol ,
such thing, they say, as hereditary depravity unless the soul of the \
child is the same numerical substance as the soul of the parent. ^
That is, the plain assertions of the Scriptures cannot be true unless
the most obscure, unintelligible, and self-contradictory, and the
least generally received philosophical theory as to the constitution
of man and the propagation of the race be adopted. No man has
a right to hang the millstone of his philosophy around the neck of
the truth of God.
3. There is a third cautionary remark which must not be omitted.
The whole theory of traducianism is founded on the assumption
that God, since the original creation, operates only through means.
Since the " sixth day the Creator has, in this world, exerted no
1 UtOtr dtn Urqjruiiy Jtr Seelen, Muiiicli, 1854, p. 82, note 1.
74 PART n. Ch. m. — origin of the soul.
strictly creative energy. He rested from the work of creation
upon the seventh day, and still rests." ^ The continued creation
of souls is declared by Delitzsch ^ to be inconsistent with God's
relation to the world. He now produces only mediately, i. e.,
throu<>-h the operation of second causes. This is a near approach
to the mechanical theory of the universe, which supposes that God,
havino- created the world and endowed his creatures with certain
faculties and properties, leaves it to the operation of these second
causes. A continued superintendence of Providence may be
admitted, but the direct exercise of the divine efficiency is denied.
What, then, becomes of the doctrine of regeneration? The new
birth is not the effect of second causes. It is not a natural effect
produced by the influence of the truth or the energy of the human
will. It is due to the immediate exercise of the almighty power
of God. God's relation to the world is not that of a mechanist
to a machine, nor such as limits Him to operating only through
second causes. He is immanent in the world. He sustains and
guides all causes. He works constantly through them, with them,
and without them. As in the operations of writing or speaking
there is with us the union and combined action of mechanical,
chemical, and vital forces, controlled by the presiding power of
mind ; and as the mind, while thus guiding the operations of the
body, constantly exercises its creative energy of thought, so God,
as immanent in the world, constantly guides all the operations of
second causes, and at the same time exercises uninteiTuptedly his
creative energy. Life is not the product of physical causes. We
know not that its origin is in any case due to any cause other than
the immediate power of God. If life be the peculiar attribute of
immaterial substance, it may be produced agreeably to a fixed plan
by the creative energy of God whenever the conditions are present
under which He has purposed it should begin to be. The organi-
zation of a seed, or of the embryo of an animal, so far as it consists
of matter, may be due to the operation of material causes guided
by the providential agency of God, while the vital principle itself
is due to his creative power. There is nothing in this derogatory
to the divine character. There is nothing in it contrary to the
Scriptures. There is nothing in it out of analogy with the works
and working of God. It is far preferable to the theory which either
entirely banishes God from the world, or restricts his operations to
SI eoncursus with second causes. The objection to creationism that
1 Shedd's Hklory of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 13.
'■' Delitzsch's Biblische Psychohgie, p. 79.
§4.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 75
it does away with the doctrine of miracles, or that it supposes God
to sanction every act with which his creative power is connected,
does not seem to have even plausibility. A miracle is not simply
an event due to the immediate agency of God, for then every act
of conversion would be a miracle. But it is an event, occurring in
the external world, which involves the suspension or counteracting
of some natural law, and which can be referred to nothing but tlie
immediate power of God. The origination of life, therefore, is
neither in nature nor design a miracle, in the proper sense of the
word. This exercise of God's creative energy, in connection with
the agency of second causes, no more implies approbation' than the
fact that He gives and sustains the energy of the murderer proves
that He sanctions murder.
4. Finally this doctrine of traducianism is held by those who
contend for the old realistic doctrine that humanity is a generic
substance or life. The two theories, however, do not seem to har-
monize, and their combination produces great confusion and obscu-
rity. According to the one theory the soul of the child is derived
from the soul of its parents ; according to the other theory there
is no derivation. One magnet is not, or need not be derived from
another ; one Leyden jar is not derived from another ; nor one
galvanic battery from another. There is no derivation in the case.
The general forces of magnetism, electricity and galvanism, are
manifested in connection with given material combinations. And
if a man be the manifestation of the general principle of humanity
in connection with a given human body, his human nature is not
derived from his immediate progenitors.
The object of this discussion is not to arrive at certainty as to
what is not clearly revealed in Scripture, nor to explain what is,
on all sides, admitted to be inscrutable, but to guard against the
adoption of principles which are in opposition to plain and impor-
tant doctrines of the word of God. If traducianism teaches that
the soul admits of abscission or division ; or that the human race
are constituted of numerically the same substance ; or that the Son
of God assumed into personal union with himself the same numer-
ical substance which sinned and fell in Adam ; then it is to be re-
jected as both false and dangerous. But if, without pretending to
explain everything, it simply asserts that the human race is propa-
gated in accordance with the general law which secures that like
begets like ; that the child derives its nature from its parents
through the operation of physical laws, attended and controlled by
the agency of God, whether directive or creative, as in all other
76 PAKT II. Ch. m. — origin of the soul.
cases of the propagation of living creatures, it may be regarded
as an open question, or matter of indifference. Creationism does
not necessarily suppose that there is any other exercise of the
immediate power of God in tiie production of the human soul, than
such as takes place in the production of life in other cases. It
only denies that the soul is capable of division, that all mankind
are composed of numerically the same essence and that Christ
assumed numerically the same essence that sinned in Adam.
CHAPTER IV.
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
There is still another question which science has forced on
theology, in relation to man, which cannot be overlooked. Have
all mankind had a common origin ? and have they a common
nature ? Are they all descended from one pair, and do they
constitute one species ? These questions are answered affirma-
tively in the Bible and by the Church universal. They are an-
swered in the negative by a large and increasing class of scientific
men. As the unity of the race is not only asserted in the Scrip-
tures but also assumed in all they teach concerning the apostasy
and redemption of man, it is a point about which the mind of the
theologian should be intelligently convinced. As a mere theolo-
gian he may be authorized to rest satisfied with the declarations of
the Bible ; but as a defender of the faith he should be able to give
an answer to those who oppose themselves.
There are two points involved in this question : community of
origin, and unity of species. All plants and animals dei'ived by-
propagation from the same original stock are of the same species ;
but those of the same species need not be derived from a common
stock. If God saw fit at the beginning, or at any time since, to
create plants or animals of the same kind in large numbers and in
different parts of the earth, they would be of the same species (or
kind) though not of the same origin. The oaks of America and
those of Europe are identical in species, even although not derived*
from one and the same parent oak. It may be admitted that the
great majority of plants and animals were originally produced
not singly or in pairs, but in groups, the earth bringing forth a
multitude of individuals of the same kind. It is therefore in itself
possible that all men may be of the same species, although not all
descended from Adam. And such is the opinion of some distin-
guished naturalists. The Scriptural doctrine, however, concernino-
man is, that the race is not only the same in kind but the same in
origin. They are all the children of a common parent, and have
a common nature.
78 PART II. Cii. IV. — UNION OF THE HUMAN RACE.
§ 1. Meaning of the Word, or the Idea of Species.
It is obviously essential to any intelligent answer to the question
whether all the varieties of men are of one species, that we should
be able to tell what a species is. This is a point of very great dif-
ficulty. Naturalists not only differ in their definitions of the term,
but they differ greatly in classification. Some assume a spot on
the wing of a butterfly, or a slight diversity of plumage in a bird,
as proof of difference of species. Some therefore divide into six
or eight species what others comprehend in one. Nothing there-
fore can be done until men come to a common understanding on
this subject, and the true idea of species be determined and au-
thenticated.
General Characteristics of Species.
Before considering the various definitions of the term, it is
proper to remark that there are certain characteristics of species
which at least, until of late, have been generally recognized and
admitted. (1.) Originality, i. e., they owe their existence and
character to immediate creation. They are not produced by i)hys-
ical causes, nor are they ever derived from other genera or species.
They are original forms. This is admitted by naturalists of all
classes. Such is the doctrine of Cuvier, Agassiz, Dr. Morton, and
of those who hold that the varieties of the human race are so
many distinct species. They mean by this that they had different
origins, and are not all derived fuom a common stock. Every
species therefore, by general consent, has had a single origin.
(2.) Universality, i. e., all the individuals and varieties belonging
to the same species have all its essential characteristics. Wherever
you find the teeth of a carnivorous animal, you find a stomach able
to digest animal food, and claws adapted to seize and hold prey.
Wherever you find fins to effect motion in water, you find a
breathing apparatus suited to the same element. The species is
transmitted whole and entire. It is the same in all individuals be-
longing to it, and in that sense universal. (3.) Immutability, or
permanence. By this is meant first, that one species is never lost
or merged in another ; and secondly, that two or more species
never combine so as to produce a third. The rose cannot be
merged into the tulip ; nor can the rose and tulip be made to
produce a new species, which is neither the one nor the other.
The only permanent transmissible forms of organic life, are such
as constitute distinct species. Immutability, therefore, or the
§l.J MEANING OF THE WORD SPECIES. 79
power to perpetuate itself, is one of the indispejisable character-
istics of species. This, until recently, has been the universally
admitted doctrine of naturalists. And notwithstanding the efforts
of the advocates of the different theories of development, it still
remains the general faith of the scientific world. The leading
arguments in support of this doctrine have already been adverted
to, when speaking of the theory of Mr. Darwin on the origin of
species. Those arguments are briefly the following. (1.) The
historical fact that all known species of plants and animals are
now precisely what they were as far back as history reaches.
The Bible and the records on the Egyptian monuments carry
us back to a point thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
During this whole period of five or six thousand years species
have remained the same. (2.) If we are to receive the facts
of geology as authenticated, it is clear that the same permanence
has existed from the very beginning of life on our globe. As
long as any species exists at all, it exists unchanged in all that
is essential to it. (3.) There is an entire and acknowledged
absence of all evidence of transmutation ; none of the transition
points or links of connection between one species and another is
anywhere discoverable. (4.) If species were not thus immutable
the animal and vegetable world instead of presenting the beautiful
order everywhere visible, would exhibit a perfect chaos of all or-
ganic life. (5.) Notwithstanding the ingenious and long contin-
ued efforts to render hybrids prolific, such attempts have uniformly
failed. The two greatest living authorities on this subject are Dr.
Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina, and IM. Flourens of the
Jardin des Plantes in Paris. " Either hybrids," says the latter,
" born of the union of two distinct species, unite and soon become
sterile, or they unite with one of the parent stocks and soon return
to this type — they in no case give what may be called a new
species, that is to say, an intermediate durable species." " Les
especes ne s'alterent point, ne changent point, ne passent point de
Tune a I'autre ; les especes sont Fixes." ^ There is no natural
law better authenticated or more generally admitted than that
species are immutable and capable of indefinite propagation.
Definitions of Species.
No group of animals therefore can be regarded as a distinct spe-
cies which has not existed as distinct from the beginning, and Avhich
is not immutable in its essential characteristics, and which is not
1 De la Lonyeviie flumniie, etc., par P. Flourens, Paris, 1855.
80 PART 11. Ch. IV. — unity OF THE HUMAN RACE.
capable of propagating itself indefinitely. These are important
landmarks, but they are not sufficient to guide us in all cases to a
satisfactory conclusion as to whether given individuals or varieties
are of the same or of different species. (1.) Because the origin of
these varieties cannot be historically traced. The Caucasian and
the negro have existed with their present distinguishing character-
istics for several thousands of years. But this does not prove that
they differed from the beginning. (2.) Because certain varieties
of the same species when once established become permanent, and
are capable of indefinite continuance. Several varieties of dogs
depicted on the Egyptian monuments centuries before Christ, are
precisely what now exist. Naturalists therefore have sought for
some precise definition of species, although these attempts have not
been generally successful. Cuvier says : " We are under the
necessity of admitting the existence of certain forms which have
perpetuated themselves from the beginning of the world, without
exceeding the limits first px-escribed ; all the individuals belonging
to one of these forms constitute what is termed a species." De
Candolle sa3^s : " We write under the designation of species all
those individuals who mutually bear such close resemblance to each
other as admits of our supposing they have arisen from a single
pair." Agassiz ^ says : " Species is founded upon less important
distinctions, such as color, size, proportions, sculpture, etc." The
objections to these definitions are, (1.) That they do not enable us
to distinguish between species and varieties. (2.) They refer almost
exclusively to what is external or material, colour, size, proportion,
etc., as the criteria, to the neglect of the higher constituents of the
animal. Dr. Prichard says, that under the term species are in-
cluded all those animals which are supposed to have arisen in the
first instance from a single pair. And to the same effect Dr. Car-
penter says : " When it can be shown that two races have had a
separate origin, they are regarded as of different species ; and, in
the absence of proof, this is inferred when we find some peculiar-
ity of organization characteristic of each, so constantly transmitted
from parent to offspring, that the one cannot be supposed to have
lost, or the other to have acquired it, through any known operation
of physical causes." The objection to this view of the matter is
that it makes community of origin, either proved or inferred, the
criterion of sameness of species. But, in the first place, this com-
munity of origin cannot in a multitude of cases be established ; and
in the case of man, it is the very thing to be proved. The great
1 Principles of Zoology, p. xir.
^1.] MEANING OF THE WORD SPECIES. 81
question is, are Mongolians, Africans, and Caucasians all derived
from a common parent ? And in the second place, although com-
munity of origin would prove identity of species, diversity of origin
would not prove diversity of species. All the varieties of the
horse and dog would constitute one species for each class, although
they had been created as they now are. Species means kind, and
if two animals are of the same kind they are of the same species,
no matter what their origin may have been. Had God created one
pair of lions in Asia, another in North Africa, another in Senegal,
they would all belong to one species. Their identity of kind
would be precisely the same as though all were descended from
one pair. Dr. Morton's definition of species as " a primordial or-
ganic form," has obtained general acceptance. It is, however,
liable to objection on the ground of the ambiguity of the word/brw.
If by " form " be understood external structure, the definition is
unsatisfactory ; if we understand the word in its scholastic sense
of essential and formative principle, it amounts to the same thing
which is more distinctly expressed in other terms. Agassiz gives
another and much more satisfactory idea of the nature of species,
when he refers to an immaterial principle as its essential element,
and that to which the sameness of the individuals and varieties
embraced within it is to be referred.^ He says : " Besides the dis-
tinctions to be derived from the varied structure of organs, there
are others less subject to rigid analysis, but no less decisive, to be
drawn from the immaterial principle, with which every animal is
endowed. It is this which determines the constancy of species
from generation to generation, and which is the source of all the
varied exhibitions of instinct and intelligence which we see dis-
played, from the simple impulse to receive the food which is
brought within their reach, as observed in the polyps, through the
higher manifestations, in the cunning fox, the sagacious elephant,
the faithful dog, and the exalted intellect of man, which is capa-
ble of indefinite expansion." Again, he says : ^ "The constancy
of species is a phenomenon dependent on the immaterial nature."
" All animals," he says, " may be traced back in the embryo to a
mere point upon the yolk of an egg, bearing no resemblance what-
ever to the future animal. But even here an immaterial principle
which no external influence can prevent or modify, is present, and
determines its future form ; so that the egg of a hen can produce
only a chicken, and the egg of a codfish only a cod." Professor
Dana says : ^ " The units of the inorganic world are the weighed
1 Principles of Zoology, p. 9. 2 JUd, p. 43. 8 Bihliotheca Sacra, 1857, d- 863.
VOL. II. 6
82 PART II. Ch. IV. — unity OF THE HUMAN RACE.
elements and tlieir definite compounds or their molecules. The
units of the organic are species, which exhibit themselves in their
simplest condition in the germ-cell state. The kingdoms of life in
all their magnificent proportions are made from these units."
Again, ^ " When individuals multiply from generation to genera-
tion, it is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea ; and the true
notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea
or potential element which is at the basis of every individual of the
group." Here we reach solid ground. Unity of species does
not consist in unity or sameness of organic structure, in sameness
as to size, colour, or anything merely external ; but in the sameness
of the immaterial principle, or " potential idea," which constitutes
and determines the sameness of nature. In the initial point on the
yolk of the egg, there is no difference of form, no difference discerni-
ble by the microscope, or discoverable by chemical analysis, between
one crerm and another ; betw^een the initial cell of the bird and that
of the fish. And yet the whole difference is there. The differ-
ence, therefore, cannot exist in what is external (although within
certain limits and in further development it is manifested exter-
nally), but in what is immaterial. So that where the immaterial
principle of Agassiz, or the potential idea of Dana, is the same,
the species is the same ; where the immaterial principle is different,
the species is different.
§ 2. Evidence of Identity of Species.
Such being the case, the only question is, how can we deter-
mine whether the immaterial principle which constitutes and deter-
mines the species, be the same or different. Aside from divine
revelation, this can be ascertained : (1.) Partly from the organic
structure. (2.) Partly from the <^vo-ts, or physical nature. (3.)
Partly from the i/'^x^/, or psychological nature. (4.) Partly from
permanence and capability of indefinite propagation.
Organic Structure.
The first evidence of the identity of species is to be sought in the
o-w/xa, or the organic structure. The evidence of design is impressed
upon all the organized bodies in the universe, and especially upon
the bodies of all animals. Those intended to live on the dry
ground, those intended to live in water, and those intended to
fly in the aii', have their animal frame adapted to these several
modes or conditions of existence. There is also clear evidence of
1 Bibliotheca Sacra, 1857, p. 861.
§ 2.] EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY OF SPECIES. 83
the unity of this design. That is, it is carried out in all parts of
the bodily organization. Those animals intended to live on dry
ground have none of the structure, or organs, or members pecu-
liarly suited to aquatic animals. The Hon, tiger, ox, horse, etc., have
neither the gills, the scales, the fins, nor the rudder-like tail of the
fish. All parts of the animal harmonize. They are all related and
adapted to one and the same end. The body of the fish is shaped
so as to cleave the water with the least resistance ; its fins are
oars, its tail is adapted both for propulsion and guidance ; its
breathing apparatus is suited to separate the air from water ; its
digestive organs are adapted to the assimilation of the kind of food
furnished by the element in which it lives. The same thing is ob-
viously true of all terrestrial animals. Besides this general adapta-
tion of animals for living in the air, in the water, and on the dry
ground, there are innumerable more specific adaptations suiting
the species of fishes, birds, and land animals for the particular
modes of life for which they are designed. Some are intended to
be carnivorous, and their bodies are harmoniously constructed with
a view to that end. Others are intended to live on herbs, and in
them we find everything adapted for that purpose. This adapta-
tion refers to numerous and varied purposes. Hence the genera
and the species of animals belonging to the different departments,
classes, orders, and families into which the animal kingdom is di-
vided, are exceedingly numerous, and each has its distinctive cor-
poreal organization indicative of the specific end it is intended
to subserve. So minute, and so fixed is the plan on which each
species of animal is constructed, that a skilful naturalist, from the
examination of a single bone, can tell not only the family, or genus,
but the very species to which it belongs. Agassiz has, from a
single scale of a fish, delineated its whole body as accurately as
though the living animal had been photographed. And the cor-
rectness of his delineation has been afterwards verified by the dis-
covery of a perfect specimen of the species portrayed. Now, the
important principle deducible from these admitted facts is, that no
diversity of colour, form, proportion, structure, etc., not indicative
of design, or not proving a difference in the immaterial principle
which determines the nature of the animal, can of itself be admitted
as proof of diversity of species. The Italian greyhound and the
English mastiff differ in all the respects just mentioned. The Siiet-
land pony, the London dray-horse, and the Arabian or the Barb
exhibit similar striking diversities. But when they come to be
anatomically examined, it is found that they are constructed on the
84 PART n. Ch. IV. -unity of the human race.
same plan. The bony structures, the distribution of the nerves,
muscles, and blood-vessels, are all expressive of the same general
intention. Hence, naturalists refer these varieties to the same spe-
cies. And the correctness of this conclusion is confirmed by every
other criterion of the identity of species. While it is admitted that
such diversities do exist in the varieties belonging to the same spe-
cies of the lower animals, it is surprising that far less diversities of
the same kind among the varieties of the human family should be
insisted upon, as evidence of difference of species. The wild dog
wherever found is nearly of the same colour, and the same size,
with ears, limbs and tail of the same form, and yet how endless are
the permanent varieties derived from that original stock. It is
well known that such varieties can be artificially produced. By
skilful breeding almost any peculiarit}' of form, colour, or struc-
ture within the limits of the original idea of the species, can be
produced and perpetuated ; as is seen in the different breeds of
horses, cattle, and sheep found even in so restricted a field of oper-
ation as Great Britain. It is certain, therefore, that no diversity
of an external or material character, not indicative of diversity of
design, plan, and intention can properly be assumed as indicative
of diversity of species. The presence of a skin connecting the toes
or claws of a bird, is in itself a comparatively small affair. It is
insignificant as to the amount of material expended, and as to the
effect on the general appearance compared to the points of differ-
ence between the greyhound and the mastiff, and yet it is indica-
tive of design. It indicates that the animal is intended to live in
the water ; and everything else in its structure and nature is found
to correspond with that intention. A small difference of structure
indicative of design will prove difference of species, when much
greater differences not thus indicative are perfectly consistent with
unity of species.
Physiological Argumeiit.
The second method of determining the identity of the imma-
terial principle in which the idea of species resides, is the exami-
nation of its ^ucris, or its physiology. To this department belongs
all that relates to enervation or the distribution of the nerve
power ; to the circulation of the blood ; to respiration ; to calorifi-
cation or production of animal heat ; to the distribution of the mus-
cles voluntary and involuntary ; to the processes of digestion, assim-
ilation, propagation, etc., etc. As to this point it is to be observed,
CI .) That the <^u(ns, or animal nature, is always in accordance with
§ 2.] EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY OF SPECIES. 86
the o-w/Att, or corporeal structure. We never find tlie organs of an
aquatic animal with the </>v<ns of a land animal. Everything relat-
ing to the physiology of the animal is in harmony with its corpo-
real organization. (2.) That where in all respects the physical
nature of individuals or varieties is the same, there the species is
the same ; where the <^ucrts is different, the species is different.
(3.) That the physiolog}' of an animal is thus as easily ascertained,
and is just as uniform and fixed, as its material structure, and in
fact much more so. The material structure may, and as we have
seen does, diflfer exceedingly in the different varieties included
under the same species, but the <^vo-is is always the same. The
physiology of the greyhound is identical with that of the mastiff;
and that of the Shetland pony is the same as that of the Lon-
don dray-horse.
Psychological Argument.
The third criterion of the identity of species is to be sought
in the ^vxri^ or the psychological nature of the animal. The </'i^x'7
is the immaterial principle which belongs to all animals, and is the
same in kind in every distinct species. It is that in which the life
resides ; which is the seat of the instincts, and of that measure of
intelligence, be it greater or less, which belongs to the animal.
The ^vx^ is the same in all the individuals of the same species, and
it is permanent. The instincts and habits of the bee, the wasp, the
ant, and the beaver; of the lion, tiger, wolf, fox, horse, dog, and ox;
and of all the endless diversities of beasts, birds, fishes, and insects,
are the same in all ages and in all parts of the world. This im-
material principle is of a higher order in some cases than in others,
and admits of greater or less degrees of culture, as seen in the
trained elephant or well-disciplined pointer. But the main thing
is that each species has its own ^^x^i and that this is a higher
element and more decisive evidence of identity than the corporeal
structure or even the <;ti;o-is, or animal nature. Where these three
criteria concur, where the corporeal organization, in everything
indicative of design, is the same ; where the <^i;W and the ^vxq, the
physical and psychological natures, are the same, there, beyond all
reasonable doubt, the species is the same.
The fourth criterion of species is found not only in its perma
nence but in the capacity of procreation and indefinite propagation
which belongs to all the individuals and varieties which it includes.
Animals of the same species can propagate their kind. Animals of
different species cannot combine and perpetuate a new or mongi'el
86 PAKT n. Cii. IV. — UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
species. This as we have seen is an admitted fact among all classes
of naturalists, a few individuals excepted. It is a fact patent to all
mankind and verified by the experience of all ages.
§ 3. Application of these Criteria to Man.
When we come to apply these several criteria to the human
race, it is found beyond dispute that they all concur in proving
that the whole human family are of one and the same species.
In the first place the corporeal frame or external structure is
the same in all the varieties of the race. There is the same num-
ber of bones in the skeleton ; their arrangement and disposition
are the same. There is the same distribution of the blood-vessels.
The brain, the spinal marrow, and the nervous system are the
same in all. They all have the same muscles amounting to many
thousand in number. The organs for breathing, respiration, diges-
tion, secretion, and assimilation, are the same in all. There are
indeed indefinite diversities in size, complexion, and character, and
colour of the hair, within the same variety of the race, and be-
tween the varieties themselves. Some of these diversities are
variable, and some are fixed. The Caucasian, the Mongolian, the
African, have each their peculiarities by which the one is easily
distinguished from the other, and which descend from generation
to generation without alteration. With regard to these peculiari-
ties, however, it is to be remarked, first, that they are less im-
portant and less conspicuous than those which distinguish the
different varieties of domestic animals all belonging to the same
species. No two men, or no men of different races, differ from
each other so much as the little Italian greyhound and the power-
ful mastiff or bull-dog. And secondly, none of these peculiarities
are indicative of difference of design, or plan, and therefore they
are not indicative of difference in the immaterial principle, which
according to the naturalists of the highest class, determines the
identity of species and secures its permanence. And thirdly, these
peculiarities are all referrible to the differences of climate, diet, and
mode of life, and to the effect of propagation in case of acquired
peculiarities. The truth of this last statement as to the influence
of these several causes in modifying and perpetuating varieties in
the same species, is abundantly illustrated and confirmed in the
case of all the lower animals. Such is the sameness of all the
varieties of mankind as to their corporeal structure, that a system
of anatomy written in Europe and founded on the examination of
the bodies of Europeans exclusively, would be as applicable in
Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, as in Europe itself.
§3.] APPLICATION OF THESE CRITERIA TO MAN. 87
The second criterion of sameness of species is to be sought in
the <^uo-(.s, or physical nature. In this respect also all mankind are
found to agree, so that the physiology of the Caucasian, Mongo-
lian, and African is precisely the same. The laws which regulate
the vital processes are the same in all ; respiration, digestion, secre-
tion, and propagation, are all conducted in the same way in every
variety of the species.
The third criterion is found in the ij/vxn or psychological nature.
This, as we have seen, is the highest test, for the i/'^x^ or imma-
tei'ial principle is the most important element in the constitution of
every living creature. Where that is the same, the species is the
same. There can be no reasonable doubt that the souls of all men
are essentially the same. They not only have in common all the
appetites, instincts, and passions, which belong to the souls of the
lower animals, but they all share in those higher attributes which
belong exclusively to man. They all are endowed with reason,
conscience, and free agency. They all have the same constitu-
tional principles and affections. They all stand in the same rela-
tion to God as spirits possessing a moral and religious nature.
The fourth criterion is permanence, and the ability of indefinite
propagation. We have seen that it is a law of nature, recognized
by all naturalists (with a few recent exceptions), that animals of
different species do not cohabit, and cannot propagate. Where the
species are nearly allied, as the horse and the ass, they may pro-
duce offspring combining the peculiarities of both parents. But
there the process stops. Mules cannot continue the mongrel
race. It is however an admitted fact that men of eveiy race,
Caucasian, Mongolian, and African, can thus cohabit, and their
offspi'ing can be indefinitely propagated and combined. " Were
these units [species]," says Professor Dana,^ "capable of blending
with one another indefinitely, they would no longer be units, and
species could not be recognized. The system of life would be a
maze of complexities ; and whatever its grandeur to a being that
could comprehend the infinite, it would be unintelligible chaos to
man. ... It would be to man the temple of nature fused over
its whole surface, and through its structure, without a line the
mind could measure or comprehend." As therefore the universe is
constructed on a definite plan, as its laws are uniform ; as the con-
stituent elements of the material world are permanent, it would
be in strange contradiction with this universal analogy, if in the
highest department of nature, in the organic and living world,
1 Bibliotkeca Sacra, 1857, p. 863.
88 PART n. ch. IV. — unity of the human race.
everything should be unstable, that species could mingle with
species, and chaos take the place of order and uniformity. As
therefore the different varieties of men freely unite and produce
offspring permanently prolific, all those varieties must belong to
one and the same species, or one of the most fixed of the laws of
nature, is in their case reversed.
The Evidence of Identity of Race Cumulative.
It is to be observed that the strength of this argument for the
unity of the human race does not depend upon anj^ one of the above
mentioned particulars separately. It is rather in their combina-
tion that the power of the argument lies. It is not simply because
the corporeal structure is essentially the same in all men ; nor
simply because they have all the same physical, or the same psy-
chological nature ; or that they are capable of producing perma-
nently prolific offspring ; but because all these particulars are true
in respect to the whole human family wherever found and through
the whole course of its history. It becomes a mere matter of
logomachy to dispute whether men are of the same species, if they
have the same material organism, the same <^vo-ts and the same
^Xn- Whether of the same species or not, if these things be
admitted which cannot be rationally denied, they are of the same
nature, they are beings of the same kind. Naturalists may give
what meaning they please to the word species. This cannot alter
the facts of the case. All men are of the same blood, of the same
race, of the same order of creation.
" That the races of men, "says Delitzsch," are not species of one
genus, but varieties of one species, is confirmed by the agreement
in the psychological and pathological phenomena in them all, by
similarity in the anatomical structure, in the fundamental powers
and traits of the mind, in the limits to the duration of life, in the
normal temperature of the body and the average rate of pulsation,
in the duration of pregnancy, and in the unrestricted fruitfulness
of marriao-es between the various races." ^
o
§ 4. Philological and Moral Evidence.
Besides the arguments above mentioned, which are all of a
zoological character, there are others, not less conclusive, of a
different kind. It is one of the infelicities which has attended
this controversy, that it has been left too much in the hands of
naturalists, of men trained to the consideration almost exclusively
1 Commentary on Genesis.
§ 4.] PHILOLOGICAL AND MORAL EVIDENCE. 89
of what is material, or at most of what falls within the department
of natural life. They thus become one-sided, and fail to take in
all the aspects of the case, or to estimate duly all the data which
enter into the solution of tlie problem. Tims Agassiz ignores all
the facts connected with the languages, with the history, and with
the mental, moral, and religious character and condition of man.
He therefore comes to conclusions which a due consideration of
those data would have rendered impossible.
The science o^ comparative philology, is founded on laws which
are as certain an^t as authoritative as the laws of nature. Language
is not a fortuitous production. It is essentially different from in-
stinctive cries, or inarticulate sounds. It is a production of the
mind, exceedingly complex and subtle. It is impossible that races,
entirely distinct, should have the same language. It is absolutely
certain from the character of the French, Spanish, and Italian lan-
guages, that those nations are, in large measure, the common de-
scendants of the Latin race. When therefore it can be shown that
the languages of different races or varieties of men are radically the
same, or derived from a common stock, it is impossible rationally
to doubt their descent from a common ancestry. Unity of lan-
guage, therefore, proves unity of species because it proves unity
of origin. Diversity of language, however, does not prove diver-
sity either of species or of origin. Because that diversity may be
otherwise accounted for ; as by the confusion of tongues at Babel,
or by the early and long-continued separation of different tribes.
The point, however, now to be urged, is this. Such naturalists as
Agassiz, on merely zoological principles, have decided that it is
more probable (not that it is necessary or certain, but simply that
it is more probable), that the different varieties of men, even down
to different nations, have had different origins, and as Agassiz in his
later writings maintains, are of different species ; when, in many
cases at least, it is absolutely certain, from the character of the
languages which they speak, that they must have been derived
from a common stock. Agassiz and others represent the Asiatic
and European races as distinct in origin and species. But Alex-
ander von Humboldt says, " The comparative study of languages
shows us that races now separated by vast tracts of land, are allied
too-ether, and have migrated from one common primitive seat. . . .
The largest field for such investigations into the ancient condition
of language, and consequently into the period when the whole
family of mankind was, in the strict sense of the word, to be re-
garded as one living whole, presents itself in the long chain of
90 PART II. Cn. IV. — UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
Indo-Germanic languages, extendino- from the Gancjes to the
Iberian extremity of Europe, and from Sicily to the North
Cape." 1 Max Miiller says, " The evidence of language is irre-
fragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to, with regard
to ante-historical periods There is not an English jury
nowadays, Avhich, after examining the hoary documents of lan-
guage, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legiti-
mate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton." ^ The
Chevalier Bunsen says, "The Egyptian language attests an unity
of blood with the great Aramaic tribes of Asia, whose languages
have been comprised under the general expression of Semitic, or
the languages of the family of Shem. It is equally connected by
identity of origin with those still more numerous and illustrious
tribes which occupy now the greatest part of Europe, and may,
perhaps, alone or with other families, have a right to be called
the famil}' of Japhet." ^ This family, he says, includes the Ger-
man nation, the Greeks and Romans, and the Indians and Persians.
Two thirds of the human race are thus identified by these two
classes of languages which have had a common origin. By the
same infillible test Bunsen shows that the Asiatic origin of all the
North American Indians, " is as fully proved as the unity of family
among themselves."* Every day is adding some new language to
this affiliated list, and furnishing additional evidence of the unity
of mankind. The particular |)oint to be now considered is, that
the conclusions of the mere zoologist as to the diversity of species
and consequent diversity of origin of the different varieties of our
race, are proved to be false by the certain testimony of the com-
mon origin of the languages which they speak.
The Spiritual Relationship of Men.
Besides the arguments already mentioned in favour of the unity
of mankind, next to the direct assertion of the Bible, that which
after all has the greatest force is the one derived from the present
condition of our moral and spiritual nature. Wherever we meet
a man, no matter of what name or nation, we not only find that
he has the same nature with ourselves ; that he has the same
organs, the same senses, the same instincts, the same feelings, the
same faculties, the same understanding, will, and conscience, and
the same capacity for religious culture, but that he has the same
guilty and polluted nature, and needs the same redemption.
1 Cosmos, Otto's Translation, edit. London, 1849, vol. ii. pp. 471, 472.
2 Quoted in Cabell's Unity of Mankind, pp. 228, 229. 8 ibid. p. 232
< The Philosophy of Universal History, edit. London, 1854, vol. ii. p. 112.
§4.] PHILOLOGICAL AND MORAL EVIDENCE. 91
Christ died for all men, and we are commanded to preach the
gospel to every creature under heaven. Accordingly nowhere
on the face of the earth are men to be found who do not need
the gospel or who are not capable of becoming partakers of the
blessings which it offers. The spiritual relationship of men, their
common apostasy, and their common interest in the I'edemption of
Christ, demonstrate their common nature and their common origin
beyond the possibility of reasonable or excusable doubt.
Our attention has thus far been directed specially to the unity
cf mankind in species. Little need be said in conclusion as to
their unity of origin. (1.) Because in the opinion of the most
distinguished naturalists, unity of species is itself decisive proof of
the unity of origin. (2.) Because even if this be denied, it is
nevertheless universally admitted that when the species is the
same the origin may be the same. If mankind differ as to species
they cannot be descended from a common parent, but if identical
in species there is no difficulty in admitting their common descent.
It is indeed principally for the sake of disproving the Scrij)tural
statement that all men are the children of Adam, and to break
up the common brotherhood of man, that diversit}' of species is
insisted upon. If therefore the latter be admitted, the former
may be easily conceded. (3.) The common origin of the lan-
guages of the vast majority of men, proves, as we have seen, their
community of origin, and as an inference their unity as to
species. And as this community of origin is proved as to races
which the mere zoologist is disposed with the greatest confidence to
represent as distinct, the insufficiency of the grounds of their
classification is thereby demonstrated. (4.) It is, however, the
direct testimony of the Scriptures on this subject, with which all
known facts are consistent ; and the common apostasy of the race,
and their common need of redemption, which render it certain to
all who believe the Bible or the testimony of their own conscious-
ness as to the universal sinfulness of humanity, that all men are
the descendants of one fallen progenitor.
CHAPTER V.
ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
§ 1. The Scriptural Doctrine.
TIkk Scriptural docti'ine on this subject includes the following
particulars. First, That man was originally created in a state of
maturity and perfection. By this, however, is not meant that
humanity in Adam before the fall, existed in the highest state of
excellence of which it is susceptible. It is altogether probable that
our nature, in virtue of its union with the divine nature in the
person of Christ, and in virtue of the union of the redeemed with
their exalted Redeemer, shall hereafter be elevated to a dignity
and glory far greater than that in which Adam was created or to
which he ever could have attained. By the maturity of man as at
first created is meant that he was not created in a state of infancy.
It is a favourite assumption of sceptics that man at first botli as to
soul and body, was imbecile and unfurnished ; slowly forming for
himself an articulate language, and iiaving his moral powers
gradually awakened. This, however, is inconsistent not only with
the Scriptural account of his creation, but also with the part he
was designed to act, and in fact did act. By the perfection of
his original state is meant, that he was perfectly adapted to the
end for which he was made and to the sphere in which he was
designed to move. This perfection as to his body consisted not
only in the integrity and due proportion of all its parts, but also in
its perfect adaptation to the nature of the soul with which it was
united. It is commonly said by theologians that the body was
created immortal and impassible. With regard to its immortality,
it is certain that if man had not sinned he would not have died.
But whether the immortality which would then have been the
destiny of the body, would have been the result of its original
organization, or whether after its period of probation it would have
undergone a change to adapt it to its evei'lasting condition, is a
matter to be subsequently considered. By impassibility is not
necessarily meant entire freecjom from susceptibility to pain, for
^ 1.] THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE. 93
such susceptibility in our present earthly state, and perhaps in any
conceivable earthly state, is a necessary condition of safety. It
is a good and not an evil, a perfection and not a defect. All
that need be meant by the term is that the body of Adam was
free from the seeds of disease and death. There was nothing in
its constitution inconsistent with the highest happiness and well-
being of man in the state in which he was created, and the con-
ditions under which he was to live.
That the primitive state of our race was not one of barbarism
from which men have raised themselves by a slow process of im-
provement, we know. First, from the authority of Scripture, whicli
represents, as we have seen, the first man as created in the full
perfection of his nature. This fact for all Christians is decisive.
Secondly, the traditions of all nations treat of a golden age from
which men have fallen. These wide-spread traditions cannot ra-
tionally be accounted for, except on the assumption that the Scrip-
tural account of the primitive state of man is correct. Thirdly,
the evidence of history is all on the side of the doctrine of the
Bible on this subject. Egypt derived its civilization from the
East ; Greece from Phoenicia and Egypt ; Italy from Phoenicia and
Greece ; the rest of Europe from Italy. Europe is now rapidly
extending her civilizing influence over New Zealand, Australia,
and the Islands of the Pacific Oceans. The affinity of languages
proves that the early civilization of Mexico and South America
had its source in Eastern Asia. On the other hand, there is no
authentic account of a nation of savages rising by their own efforts
from a state of barbarism to a civilized condition. The fact that
Sir John Lubbock, and other advocates of the opposite doctrine,
are obliged to refer to such obscure and really insignificant facts,
as the superior culture of the modern Indians on this continent,
is a proof of the dearth of historical evidence in support of the
theory of primitive barbarism. Fourthly, the oldest records, writ-
ten and monumental, give evidence of the existence of nations in a
high state of civilization, in the earliest periods of human history.
This fact is easily accounted for on the assumption of the truth of
the Scriptural doctrine of the primitive state of man, but is unac-
countable on the opposite hypothesis. It necessitates the gratui-
tous assumption of the existence of men for initold ages prior to
these earliest historical periods. Fifthly, comparative philology
has established the fact of the intimate relation of all of the great
divisions of the human race. It has further proved that they all
had their origin from a common centre, and that that centre was
the seat of the earliest civilization.
94 PART 11. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
The theory tliat the race of man has passed throu2;]i a stone, a
bronze, and an iron age, stages of progress from barbarism to civiH-
zation, is, as before remarked, destitute of scientific foundation. It
cannot be proved that the stone age prevailed contemporaneously
in all parts of the earth. And unless this is proved it avails noth-
ing to show that there was a period at which the inhabitants of
Europe were destitute of a knowledge of the metals. The same
may be proved of the Patagonians and of some African tribes of
the present day.
It has, therefore, been almost the universal belief that the orig-
inal state of man was as the Bible teaches, his highest state, from
which the nations of the earth have more or less deteriorated. Tiiis
primitive state, however, was distinguished by the intellectual,
moral, and religious superiority of men rather than by superiority
in the arts or natural sciences. The Scriptural doctrine, therefore,
is consistent with the admitted fact that separate nations, and the
human race as a whole, have made great advances in all branches
of knowledge and in all the arts of life. Nor is it inconsistent with
the belief that the world under the influence of Christianity is con-
stantly improving, and will ultimately attain, under the reign of
Christ, millennial perfection and glory. All that is denied is, that
men were originally savages in the lowest state of barbarism, from
which they have gradually emerged.
The late Archbishop Whately, in his work on " Political Econ-
omy," avowed his belief of the common doctrine on the primitive
state of man. He says, " We have no reason to believe that any
community ever did, or ever can emerge, unassisted by external
helps, from a state of barbarism unto anything that can be called
civilization." In opposition to this doctrine, Sir John Lubbock
tries to show " That there are indications of progress even among
savatres," and, " That among the most civilized nations there are
traces of original barbarism."^ Before adducing proof of either
of those propositions, he argues against the theory that any tribe
has sunk from a higher to a lower condition, on the ground that
there are certain arts which are so simple and so useful, that if
once known, they could never be lost. If men had once been
herdsmen and agriculturists, they would never become mere
hunters ; if acquainted with the use of metals, or the art
of making earthenware, these acquisitions could not be lost.
If once possessed of religious knowledge, that knowledge could
1 Tlie. Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man. By Sir Joha Lubbock,
Bart., M. P., V. R. S., London, 1870, p. 329.
§ 1.] THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE. 95
never perish. As however, there are tribes now extant whicli
have, as he says, no religion, and no knowledge of the arts, or of
agriculture, he argues that they must have been barbarians from
the beginning, and that bai"barism must have been the original
condition of man.
To prove that savages may by their own exertions become civil-
ized he refers to such facts as the following : The Australians had
formerly bark-canoes, which they have abandoned for others, hol-
lowed out of the trunk of a tree, " which they buy from the
Malays." The Peruvians had domesticated the llama ; the Poly-
nesians made bark-cloth. " Another very strong case," he says,
" is the boomerang of the Australians. This weapon is known to
no other race of men," and therefore, he argues, cannot be a relic
of a higher state of civilization. He lays great stress on the case
of the Cherokees who have become agriculturists, having ploughs,
horses, black-cattle, etc., ignoring the fact that they were sur-
rounded by civilized Americans and had enjoyed for years the
faithful teaching of Christian missionaries who instructed them in
all the useful arts.
He finds indications of the original barbarism of the race in the
fact that flint implements are found not only in Europe, but also in
Asia, the cradle of mankind ; and in the gradual improvement of
the relation between the sexes.^ His book is designed to " de-
scribe the social and mental condition of savages, their art, their
systems of marriage and of relationship, their religions, language,
moral character and laws." This he does by a very copious col-
lection of particulars under these several heads ; and thence draws
the following conclusions. " That existing savages are not the de-
scendants of civilized ancestors. That the primitive condition of man
was one of utter barbarism. That from this condition several races
have independently raised themselves." ^ How these conclusions
follow from the facts detailed, it is impossible to see ; especially as
they are in opposition not only to the Bible, but to all the teach-
ings of history. That the lowest savage tribes have low ideas of
God, is no proof that our first parents were fetich worshippers,
when all history proves that the earliest religion of our race was
pure Theism. As men lost the knowledge of the true God, they be-
came more and more degraded in every other respect. And those
1 On page G6, he says, " Assuminf? that the communal marriage system shown in the
preceding pages to prevail, or have prevailed so widely among races in a low state of civil-
ization, reprfseiits the primitive and earliest social condition of man, we now come to con-
sider the various ways in which it may have been broken up and replaced by individual
marriage."
2 Ibid. p. 323
96 PART n. Ch. v. — original state of man.
who were driven away from the centres of civilization into inhos-
pitable regions, torrid or arctic, sunk lower and lower in the scale
of bein(^ Certain it is that there is nothing in Sir John Lubbock's
book that can shake the faith of a Christian child in the doctrine
of the Bible as to the primitive state of man.
§ 2. Man Created in the Image of God.
Secondly. Other animals, however, besides man, were created
in maturity and perfection, each according to its kind. It was the
distinguishing characteristic of man, that he was created in the
imao-e and likeness of God. Many of the early writers assumed that
the word " image " had reference to the body, which they thought
l)y its beauty, intelligence of aspect, and erect stature, was an adum-
bration of God, and that the word " likeness " referred to the intel-
lectual and moral nature of man. According to Augustine, im-
ao-e relates to the cognitio veritatis, and likeness to the amor virtutis ;
the former to the intellectual, and the latter to the moral faculties.
This was the foundation of the scholastic doctrine that the image of
God includes the natural attributes of the soul ; and the likeness
our moral conformity to the divine Being. This distinction was in-
troduced into the Romish theology. Bellarmin ^ says, " Imaginem
in natura, similitudinem in probitate et justitia sitam esse." He
also says, ^ " Ex his tot patrum testimoniis cogimur admittere, non
esse omnino idem imaginem et similitudinem, sed imaginem ad
naturam, similitudinem ad virtutes pertinere ; proinde Adamum
peccando non imaginem Dei, sed similitudinem perdidisse." Others
again somewhat modified this view by making the image of God
to consist in what was natural and conci-eated, and the likeness in
what was acquired. Man was created in the image of God and
fashioned himself into his likeness. That is, he so used his natural
endowments as to become like God in character. All these dis-
tinctions, however, rest on a false interpretation of Gen. i. 26.
The words D'!?r? and rVKil, are simply explanatory one of the other.
Image and likeness, means an image which is like. The simple
declaration of the Scripture is that man at his creation was like
God. Wherein that likeness consisted has been a matter of dis-
pute. According to the Reformed theologians and the majority of
the theologians of other divisions of the Church, man's likeness to
God included the following points : —
His intellectual and moral nature. God is a Spirit, the human
1 De Gratia et Libera Ai-bitrio, i. 6. D{sputatiom$, Paris, 1608, vol. iv. p. 402, a.
2 De Gratia Primi Hominis, 2. Ibid. p. 8, d.
§ 2.] MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 97
soul is a spirit. The essential attributes of a spirit are reason,
conscience, and will. A spirit is a rational, moral, and therefore
also, a free agent. In making man after his own image, therefore,
God endowed him with those attributes which belong to his own
nature as a spirit. Man is thereby distinguished from all other
inhabitants of this world, and raised immeasurably above them.
He belongs to the same order of being as God Himself, and is
therefore capable of communion with his Maker. This conformity
of nature between man and God, is not only the distinguishing pre-
rogative of humanity, so far as earthly creatures are concerned,
but it is also the necessary condition of our capacity to know God,
and therefore the foundation of our religious nature. If we were
not like God, we could not know Him. We should be as the
beasts which perish. The Scriptures in declaring that God is the
Father of spirits, and that we are his offspring, teach us that we
are partakers of his nature as a spiritual being, and that an essen-
tial element of that likeness to God in which man was originally
created consists in our rational or spiritual nature. On this sub-
ject, however, there have been two extreme opinions. The Greek
theologians made the image of God in which man was created to
consist exclusively in his rational nature. The majority of them
taught that the eiKwv was ev XoyiKfj </'ux?? > or as John of Damascus ^
expresses it : to kut eiKoia, ro voepou 8r]\ol kol avTe|ovcnov. And
Irengeus ^ says : " Homo vero rationabilis et secundum hoc similis
Deo." The Remonstrants and Socinians were disposed to confine
the image of God in which man was created to his dominion.
Thus Limborch ^ says : " Ilia imago aliud nihil est, quam eximia,
quaedam qualitas et excellentia, qua homo Deum speciatim refert :
hgec autem est potestas et dominium, quod Deus homini dedit in
omnia a se creata. .... Hoc enim dominio Deum proprie
refert, estque quasi visibilis Deus in terra super omnes Dei crea-
turas constitutus." This dominion, however, was founded on
man's rational nature, and therefore Limborch adds, that Adam's
likeness to God pertained to his soul, " quatenus ratione instructa
est, cujus ministerio, veluti sceptro quodam, omnia sibi subjicere
potest." These views agree in excluding man's moral conformity
to God from the idea of the divine image in which he was created.
The Lutheran theologians were, in general, inclined to go to the
opposite extreme. The image of God, according to them, was that
1 II. 12 ; Strauss, Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 690.
2 IV. iv. 3; Works, edit. Leipzig, 1853, vol. i. p. 569.
3 Thtologia Christiana, ii. xxiv. 2, edit. Amsterdam, 1715, pp. 133, 134.
VOL. U. 7
98 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
which was lost by the fall, and which is restored by redemption.
Thus Luther says : " So ist nun bier so viel gesagt, dass der
Mensch am Anfang geschaffen ist ein Bild, das Gott ahnlich war,
voll Weisheit, Tugend, Liebe und kurzum gleich wie Gott, also
dass er voll Gottes war." And : " Das ist Gottes Bild, das eben
also wie Gott gesinnet ist und sich immer nach ihm abmet."^
Calovius and other Lutheran theologians say expressly : "Anima
ipsa rationalis non est imago divina, aut imaginis pars, quia anima
non est amissa, at imago amissa est." And again : " Unde patet,
conformitatem, quae in substantia animae reperitur aut corporis, ad
imaginem Dei, stylo biblico descriptam, non pertinere, quia substan-
tia animae aut corporis per lapsum non est perdita, nee per renova-
tionem restauratur." This, however, is rather a dispute about the
Scriptural use of the phrase " image of God," as applied to man in
his original estate, than about the fact itself; for the Lutherans did
not deny that the soul as to its nature or substance is like God.
Hollazius admits that " Ipsa substantia animse humange qu^dam Oeta
seu divina exprimit, et exemplar divinitatis refert. Nam Deus est
spiritus immaterialis, intelligens, voluntate libera agens, etc., etc.
Qu£e prffidicata de anima humana certo modo affirmari possunt." ^
The Reformed theologians take the middle ground between the
extremes of making the image of God to consist exclusively in
man's rational nature, or exclusively in his moral conformity to his
Maker. They distinctly include both. Calvin ^ says, Imago Dei
est "Integra naturae humanae praestantia, quae refulsit in Adam
ante defectionem postea sic vitiata et prope deleta, ut nihil ex ruina
nisi confusum, mutilum, labeque infectum supersit." H. a Diest^
is more explicit: "Imago Dei fuit partim inamissibilis, partim amissi-
bilis ; inamissibilis, quae post lapsum Integra permansit, veluti animae
substantia spiritualis, immortalis, rationalis, cum potentiis intelligendi
etlibere volendi ; amissibilis, quae partim plane periit, partim corrnpta
est, manentibus tantum exiguis ejusdem reliquiis ; veluti in intellectu
insignis sapientia, in voluntate et affectibus vera justitia et sanctitas,
in corpore immortalitas, sanitas, fortltudo, pulchritudo, dominium in
animalia, copia omnium bonorum et jus utendi creaturis." Maresius^
says: "Imago Dei spectavit, (1.) Animae essentiam et conditionem
spiritualem, intelligentem et volentem, quod contra Lutheranos per-
tendimus, quum post lapsum etiam rudera imaginis Dei adsint.
(2.) Eluxit in accidentali animae perfectione, mentis lumine, vol-
1 SeiTnons on Genesis, edit. Eriangen, 1843, vol. xxxiii. pp. 55, 67.
2 Examen, Leipzig, 1763, p. 463.
8 Institutio, lib. i. xv. 4, edit. Berlin, 1834, vol. i. p. 130.
* Thevlugia Biblica, Daventriie, 1644, pp. 73, 74.
* Collegium Theologicum, loc. v. 52, 53, 54, edit. Groningen, 1659, p. 60.
§3.] ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 99
untatis sanctitate, sensuum et afFectuum harmonia atque ad bonum
promptitudine ; (3.) conspicua fuit in domlnio in omnia animalia."
While, therefore, the Scriptures make the original moral perfection
of man the most prominent element of that likeness to God in which
he was created, it is no less true that they recognize man as a child
of God in virtue of his rational nature. He is the image of God,
and bears and I'eflects the divine likeness among the inhabitants of
the earth, because he is a spirit, an intelligent, voluntary agent;
and as such he is rightfully invested with universal dominion. This
is what the Reformed theologians were accustomed to call the essen-
tial image of God, as distinguished from the accidental. The one
consisting in the very nature of the soul, the other in its accidental
endowments, that is, such as might be lost without the loss of
humanity itself.
§ 3. Original Righteousness.
In the moral image of God, or original righteousness, are in-
cluded, —
1. The perfect harmony and due subordination of all that consti-
tuted man. His reason was subject to God ; his will was subject
to his reason ; his affections and appetites to his will ; the body
was the obedient organ of the soul. There was neither rebellion
of the sensuous part of his nature against the rational, nor was
there any disproportion between them needing to be controlled or
balanced by ah extra gifts or influence.
2. But besides this equilibrium and harmony in the orio-inal
constitution of man, his moral perfection in which he resembled
God, included knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The two
passages of the New Testament in which these elements of the
divine image in which man was created, are distinctly mentioned, are
Col. iii. 10, and Eph. iv. 24. In the former it is said, Ye " have put
on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
him that created him : " ei'Suo-a/Acvot rov viov, tov avaKcivovixivov els
iTTtyvwaiv kut eiKova rov KTLaavro^ avrov. New man (viov^ afreeablv'
to the ordinary distinction between vio<i and Kaivds, means recent,
newly made, as opposed to (xaXato's) old. The moral quality or
excellence of this recently formed man is expressed in the word
avaKaivovjxivov ; as in Scriptural usage what is /cau'ds is pure. This
renovation is said to be f-U eVtyi'wcriv, not in knowledge, much less
hy knowledge, but unto knowledge, so that he knows. Knowledge
is tiie effect of the renovation spoken of. The word iTrtyvwa-tv may
be connected with the words which immediately follow (»caT et^dm),
hnoioledge according to the image of God, i. e., knowledge like that
100 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
which God possesses. It is more common and natural to take
iirtyvwcny by itself, and connect Kar eiKova with the preceding partici-
ple, " renewed after the image of God." The knowledge here
intended is not mere cognition. It is full, accurate, living, or prac-
tical knowledge ; sucli knowledge as is eternal life, so that this
word here includes what in Eph. iv. 24 is expressed by righteousness
and holiness. Whether the word Kria-avros refers to God as the
author of the original creation, or of the new creation of which the
Apostle is here speaking, is matter of doubt. In the former case,
the meaning would be, the believer is renewed after the image of
his Creator. In the latter, the sense is that the renovation is after
the image of the creator of the new man. According to the one
mode of explanation the idea is more clearly expressed that man,
as originally created, was endowed with true knowledge. According
to the other interpretation this may be implied, but is not asserted.
All tliat the Apostle in that case affirms is that the regenerated
man is made like God in knowledge. But as the original man was
also like God, and as knowledge is included in that likeness, the
passage still proves that Adam was created in the possession of the
knowledge of which the Apostle here speaks. As the word kti^clv
in the New Testament always refers to the original creation, unless
some explanatory term be added, as new creation, or, unless the
context forbids such reference ; and as KT(a-avTo<; does not express the
continuous process of transformation, but the momentary act of
creation as already past, it is more natural to understand the
Apostle as speaking of tlie original likeness to God in which man
was created, and to which the believer is restored. The aurw,
therefore, is not to be understood of tov viov, but of avOpmTrov ; —
after the image of Him who created man. This is the old inter-
pretation as given by Calovius and adopted by De Wette, Riickert,
and other modern interpreters. Calovius says: "Per ma^mew
ejus, qui creavit ipsum, imago Dei, quae in prima creatione nobis
concessa vel concreata est, intelligltur, quaeque in nobis reparatur
per Spiritum Sanctum, quae ratione intellectus consistebat in cog-
nitione Dei, ut ratione voluntatis in justitia et sanctitate, Eph. iv.
24. Per verbum itaque rov KTio-avros non nova creatio, sed vetus
ilia et primaeva intelligitur, quia in Adamoconditi omnes sumus
ad imaginem Dei in cognitione Dei."
Ephesians iv. 24.
The other passage above referred to is Eph. iv. 24 : " Put on
the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true
§3.] ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 101
holiness." The new man, rof Kaivw dvOpw-n-ov, is said to be Kara Oeov,
i. e-i after the image of God ; and that image or likeness to God is
said to consist in righteousness and holiness. These words when
used in combination are intended to be exhaustive ; i. e., to include
all moral excellence. Either term may be used in this comprehen-
sive sense, but, when distinguished, SiKaLoa-vvr] means rectitude, the
being and doing right, what justice demands ; 6a-tori;s, purity, holi-
ness, the state of mind produced when the soul is full of God.
Instead of true holiness, the words of the Apostle should be ren-
dered " righteousness and holiness of the truth ; " that is, the
righteousness and holiness which are the effects or manifestations
of the truth. By truth here, as opposed to the deceit (dTraT*?)
mentioned in the twenty-second verse, is meant what in Col. iii.
10 is called knowledge. It is the divine light in the understanding,
of which the Spirit of truth is the author, and from which, as their
proximate cause, all right affections and holy acts proceed.
It is plain from these passages that knowledge, righteousness,
and holiness are elements of the image of God in which man was
originally created. By knowledge is not meant merely the faculty
of cognition, the ability to acquire knowledge, but the contents of
that faculty. As knowledge may be innate, so it may be concreated.
Adam, as soon as he began to be had self-knowledge ; he was
conscious of his own being, faculties, and states. He had also the
knowledge of what was out of himself, or he had what the modern
philosophy calls world-consciousness. He not only perceived the
various material objects by which he was surrounded, but he
apprehended aright their nature. How far this knowledge extended
we are unable to determine. Some have supposed that our first
parent had a more thorough knowledge of the external world, of
its laws, and of the nature of its various productions, than human
science has ever since attained. It is certain that he was able to
give appropriate names to all classes of animals which passed in
review before him, which supposes a due apprehension of their dis-
tinctive characteristics. On tiiis point we know nothing beyond
what the Bible teaches us. It is more important to remark that
Adam knew God; whom to know is life eternal. Knowledge, of
course, differs as to its objects. The cognition of mere speculative
truths, as those of science and history, is a mere act of the under-
standing ; tlie cognition of the beautiful involves the exercise of
our aesthetic nature ; of moral truths the exercise of our moral
nature ; and the knowledge of God the exercise of our spiritual
and religious nature. The natural man, says the Apostle, receives
102 PART II. Ch. v.— original STATE OF MAN.
not tlie things of the Spirit, neither can he know them. What is
asserted of Adam is that, as he came from the hands of his Maker,
his mind was imbued with this spiritual or divine knowledge.
All that has been said with regard to the original state of man is
involved in the account of the creation, which declares that he was
made like God ; and that he was pronounced to be good, good exceed-
ingly. What the goodness is which belongs to man as a rational,
immortal, and religious being, and which is necessary to fit him for
the sphere in which he was to move, and the destiny for which he
was created, we learn partly from the express declarations of the
Scriptures, partly from the nature of the case, and partly from what
is involved in humanity as restored by Christ. From all these sources
it is plain that the Protestant doctrine concerning the image of God
and the original righteousness in which and with which Adam was
created includes not only his rational nature, but also knowledge,
righteousness, and holiness.
§ 4. Dominion over the Creatures.
The third particular which enters into the dignity of man's origi-
nal state, and into the image of God with which he was invested,
was his dominion over the creatures. This arose from the powers
with which he was invested, and from the express appointment of
God. God constituted him ruler over the earth. He placed, as
the Psalmist said, all things under his feet. In 1 Cor. xi. 7, the
Apostle says that the man is the image and glory of God ; but the
woman is the glory of the man. This he gives as the reason why
the man should do nothing which implied the denial of his right to
rule. It was therefore as a ruler that he bore God's image, or
represented Him on earth. What is the extent of the dominion
granted to man, or to which our race was destined, it is not easy
to determine. Judging from the account given in Genesis, or even
from the stronger lansuao-e used in the eighth Psalm, we should
conclude that his authority was to extend only over the inferior
animals belonging to this earth. But the Apostle, in his exposition
of the words of the Psalmist, teaches us that far more was intended.
In 1 Cor. XV. 27, he says, " When he saith. All things are put
under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things
under him." And in Heb. ii. 8, he says, " In that he put all in
subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him."
It was therefore an absolutely universal dominion, so far as creatures
are concerned, with which man was to be invested. This universal
dominion, as we learn from the Scriptures, h^as been realized and
§5.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH. 103
attained only by the incarnation and exaltation of the Son of God.
But as God sees the end from the beginning, as his plan is immu-
table and all comprehending, this supreme exaltation of humanity
was designed from the beginning, and included in the dominion
with which man was invested.
§ 5. The Doctrine of the Romish Ohurch.
The doctrine of Romanists as to the original state of man agrees
with that of Protestants, except in one important particular. They
hold that man before the fall, was in a state of relative perfec-
tion ; that is, not only free from any defect or infirmity of body,
but endowed with all the attributes of a spirit, and imbued with
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and invested with dominion
over the creatures. Protestants include all this under the image
of God ; the Romanists understand by the image of God only the
rational, and especially the voluntary nature of man, or the freedom
of the will. They distinguish, therefore, between the image of God
and original righteousness. The latter they say is lost, the former
retained. Protestants, on the other hand, hold that it is the divine
image in its most important constituents, that man forfeited by his
apostasy. This, however, may be considered only a difference as
to words. The important point of difference is, that the Protestants
hold that original righteousness, so far as it consisted in the moral
excellence of Adam, was natural, while the Romanists maintain that
it was supernatural. According to their theory, God created man
soul and body. These two constituents of his nature are naturally
in conflict. To preserve the harmony between them, and the due
subjection of the flesh to the spirit, God gave man the supernatural
gift of original righteousness. It was this gift that man lost by his
fall ; so that since the apostasy he is in the state in which Adam
was before he was invested with this supernatural endowment. In
opposition to this doctrine, Protestants maintain that original right-
eousness was concreated and natural. Original righteousness, says
Luther,^ " Non fuisse quoddam donum, quod ab extra accederet, sep-
aratum a natura hominis. Sed fuisse vere naturalem, ita ut natura
Adse esset, diligere Deum, credere Deo, agnoscere Deum, etc. Haec
tam naturalia fuere in Adamo, quam naturale est, quod oculi lumen
recipiunt." The Council of Trent does not speak explicitly on this
point, but the language of the Roman Catechism is cleai'ly in
accordance with the more direct teachings of the theologians of the
Church of Rome, to the effect that original righteousness is a super-
1 In Genesis, cap. iii. ; Works, edit. Wittenberg, 1555 (Latin), vol. vi., leaf 42, page 2.
104 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
natural gift. In describing the original state of man that Catechism
says,^ " Quod ad animam pertinet, eum ad imaginem et similitudinem
suam formavit, liberumque ei arbitrium tribuit : omnes praeterea mo-
tus animi atque appetitiones ita in eo temperavit, ut rationis imperio
nunquain non parerent. Turn originalis justitiee admirabile donum
addidit, ac deinde cseteris animantibus prseesse voluit." Bellarmin''*
states this doctrine in clearer terms : " Integritas ilia, cum qua primus
homo conditus fuit et sine qua post ejus lapsum homines omnes nas-
cuntur, non fuit naturalis ejus conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio.
. . . .^ Sciendum est primo, hominem naturaliter constare ex came,
et spiritu, et ideo partim cum bestiis, partim cum angelis communi-
care naturam, et quidem ratione carnis, et communionis cum bestiis,
habere propensionem quandam ad bonum corporale, et sensibile, in
quod fertur per sensum et appetitum : ratione spiritus et commu-
nionis cum angelis, habere propensionem ad bonum spirituale et
intelligibile, in quod fertur per intelligentiam, et voluntatem. Ex
his autem diversis, vel contrariis propensionibus existere in uno
eodemque homine pugnam quandam, et ex ea pugna ingentem bene
agendi difficultatem, dum una propensio alteram impedit. Sciendum
secundo, divinam providentiam initio creationis, ut remedium adhi-
beret huic morbo seu languori naturae humane, qui ex conditione
materia oriebatur, addidisse homini donum quoddam insigne, justiti-
am videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo quodam fraeno pars inferior
parti superiori, et pars superior Deo facile subjecta contineretur."
The question whether original righteousness was natural or su-
pernatural cannot be answered until the meaning of the words be
determined. The word natural is often used to designate that
which constitutes nature. Reason is in such a sense natural to man
that without it he ceases to be a man. Sometimes it designates
what of necessity flows from the constitution of nature ; as when we
say it is natural for man to desire his own happiness ; sometimes it
designates what is concreated or innate as opposed to what is adven-
titious, accessory, or acquired ; in this use of the word the sense of
justice, pity, and the social affections, are natural to men. Original
righteousness is asserted by Protestants to be natural, first, with
the view of denying that human nature as at first constituted in-
volved the conflicting principles of flesh and spirit as represented
by Bellarmin, and that the pura naturalia, or simple principles of
nature as they existed in Adam, were without moral character ; and,
secondly, to assert that the nature of man as created was good, that
1 Streitwolf, Libi-i Symboliei Ecclesim Calholicw, vol. i. p. 127.
2 De Gratia Primi Hominis 2. Disputationes, vol. iv. p. 7, c.
8 Ibid. 5, — p. 15, c. d.
§5.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE ROMISH CHURCH. 105
his reason was enlightened and his will and feelings were conformed
to the moral image of God. It was natural in Adam to love God
in the same sense as it was natural for him to love himself. It was
as natural for him to apprehend the glory of God as it was for him
to apprehend the beauties of creation. He was so constituted, so
created, that in virtue of the nature which God gave him, and
without any accessory ab extra gift, he was suited to fulfil the end
of his being, namely, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Objections to the Romish Doctrine.
The obvious objections to the Romish doctrine that original
righteousness was a supernatural gift, are, (1.) That it supposes a
degrading view of the original constitution of our nature. Accord-
ing to this doctrine the seeds of evil were implanted in the nature
of man as it came from the hands of God. It was disordered or
diseased, there was about it what Bellarmin calls a morbus or lan-
guor^ which needed a remedy. But this is derogatory to the justice
and goodness of God, and to the express declarations of Scripture,
that man, humanity, human nature, was good. (2.) This doctrine
is evidently founded on the Manichean principle of the inherent
evil of matter. It is because man has a material body, that this
conflict between the flesh and spirit, between good and evil, is said
to be unavoidable. But this is opposed to the word of God and the
faith of the Church. Matter is not evil. And there is no neces-
sary tendency to evil from the union of the soul and body which
requires to be supernaturally corrected. (3.) This doctrine as to
original righteousness arose out of the Semi-Pelagianism of the
Church of Rome, and was designed to sustain it. The two doc-
trines are so related that they stand or fall together. According
to the theory in question, original sin is the simple loss of origi-
nal righteousness. Humanity since the fall is precisely what it
was before the fall, and before the addition of the supernatural gift
of righteousness. Bellarmin ^ says : " Non magis differt status hom-
inis post lapsum Adas a statu ejusdem in purls naturalibus, quam
differat spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si cul-
pam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmitate lab-
orat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita. Proinde
corruptio naturas non ex alicujus doni naturalis carentia, neque ex ali-
cujus malae qualitatis accessu, sed ex sola doni supernaturalis ob Adae
peccatum amissione profluxit.'' The conflict between the flesh and
spirit is normal and original, and therefore not sinful. Concupis-
1 De Gratia Primi Huminis, c. 5. Dispulaliones, vol. iv. p. 16, d, e.
106 PART n. ch. v. — origikal state of man.
cence, the tlieological term for this rebelHon of the lower against
the higher elements of our nature, is not of the nature of sin.
Andradius ^ (the Romish theologian against whom Chemnitz
directed his Examen of the Council of Trent) lays down
the principle, " quod nihil habeat rationem peccati, nisi fiat
a volente et sciente," which of course excludes concupiscence,
whetiier in the renewed or unrenewed, from tlie category of
sin. Hence, Bellarmin says : ^ " Reatus est omnino inseparabilis
ab eo, quod natura sua est dignum aeteriia damnatione, qua-
lem esse volunt concupiscentiam adversarii." This concupis-
cence remains after baptism, or regeneration, which Romanists say,
removes all sin ; and therefore, not being evil in its own nature,
does not detract from the merit of good works, nor render perfect
obedience, and even works of supererogation on the part of the
faithful, impossible. This doctrine of the supernatural character
of original righteousness as held by Romanists, is therefore inti-
mately connected with their whole theological system ; and is in-
compatible with the Scriptural doctrines not only of the original
state of man, but also of sin and redemption. It will, however,
appear in the sequel, that neither the standards of the Church of
Rome nor the Romish theologians are consistent in their views of
original sin and its relation to the loss of original righteousness.
§ 6. Pelagian and Rationalistic Doctrine.
According to Pelagians and Rationalists man was created a ra-
tional free agent, but without moral character. He was neither
righteous nor unrighteous, holy nor unholy. He had simply the
capacity of becoming either. Being endowed with reason and
free will, his character depended upon the use which he made of
those endowments. If he acted right, he became righteous ; if he
acted wrong, he became unrighteous. There can be, according to
their system, no such thing as concreated moral character, and
therefore they reject the doctrine of original righteousness as irra-
tional. This view of man's original state is the necessary conse-
quence of the assumption that moral character can be predicated
only of acts of the will or of the subjective consequences of such
acts. This principle which precludes the possibility of original
righteousness in Adam, precludes also the possibiHty of innate,
hereditary depravity, commonly called original sin ; and also the
possibility of indwelHng sin, and of habits of grace. It is a princi-
1 Baur, Katholicismus und Pi-otestanlismus, Tubingen, 1836, p. 85, note.
2 De Amissione Gratia et Statu Peccati, v. 7 ; Dlspulationes, vol. iv. p. 287, a.
§6.] PELAGIAN AND RATIONALISTIC DOCTRINE. 107
pie therefore which necessarily works an entire change in the
whole system of Christian doctrine. It is not, however, an ulti-
mate principle. It is itself an inference from the primary assump-
tion that ability limits obligation ; that a man can be neither praised
nor blamed, neither rewarded nor condemned, except for his own
acts and self-acquired character, which acts must be within the
compass of his ability. What is either concreated or innate, inher-
ent or infused, is clearly not within the power of the will, and
therefore cannot have any moral character. As this principle is
thus far reaching it ought to be definitively settled.
Consciousness proves that Dispositions as distinguished from Acts
may have Moral Character.
By the mere moral philosopher, and by theologians whose
theology is a philosophy, it is assumed as an axiom, or intuitive
truth, that a man is responsible only for what he has full power
to do or to avoid. Plausible as this principle is, it is, —
1. Opposed to the testimony of consciousness. It is a fact of con-
sciousness that we do attribute moral character to principles which
precede all voluntary action and which are entirely independent of
the power of the will. And it is a fact capable of the clearest
demonstration that such is not only the dictate of our ow- n individ-
ual consciousness, but also the conviction of all men. If we ex-
amine our own consciousness as to the judgment which we pass
upon ourselves, we shall find that we hold ourselves responsible
not only for the deliberate acts of the will, that is, for acts of de-
liberate self-determination, which suppose both knowledge and vo-
lition, but also for emotional, impulsive acts, which precede all
deliberation ; and not only for such impulsive acts, but also for the
principles, dispositions, or immanent states of the mind, by which
its acts whether impulsive or deliberate, are determined. When a
man is convinced of sin, it is not so much for specific acts of trans-
gression that his conscience condemns him, as for the permanent
states of his mind ; his selfishness, worldliness, and maliciousness ; his
ingratitude, unbelief, and hardness of heart ; his want of right affec-
tions, of love to God, of zeal for the Redeemer, and of benevolence
towards men. These are not acts. They are not states of mind
under the control of the will ; and yet in the judgment of conscience,
which we cannot silence or pervert, they constitute our character
and are just ground of condemnation. In like manner whatever
of right dispositions or principles we discover within ourselves,
whatever there is of love to God, to Christ, or to his people ; what-
108 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
ever of humility, meekness, forbearance, or of any other virtue ;
the testimony of consciousness is, that these dispositions, which are
neither the acts nor products of the will, as far as they exist within
us, constitute our character in the sight of God and man. Such
is not only the testimony of consciousness with regard to our judg-
ments of ourselves, but also as to our judgments of other men.
When we pronounce a man either good or bad, the judgment is
not founded upon his acts, but upon his character as revealed by
his acts. The terms good and bad, as applied to men, are not used
to express the character of particular actions which they perform,
but the character of the abiding principles, dispositions, or states of
mind which determine their acts, and give assurance of what they
will be in future. We may look on a good man and know that
there is something in him which constitutes his character, and
which renders it certain that he will not blaspheme, lie, or steal ;
but, on the contrary, that he will endeavour in all things to serve
God and do good to men. In like manner we may contemplate a
wicked man in the bosom of his family, when every evil passion is
hushed, and when only kindly feelings are in exercise, and yet we
know him to be wicked. That is, we not only know that he has
perpetrated wicked actions, but that he is inherently wicked ; that
there is in him an evil nature, or abiding state of the mind, which
constitutes his real character and determines his acts. When we
say that a man is a miser, we do not mean simply that he hoards
money, or grinds the face of the poor, but we mean that he has a
disposition which in time past has led to such acts and which will
continue to produce them so long as it rules in his heart. The
Pelagian doctrine, therefore, that moral character can be predicated
only of voluntary acts, is contrary to the testimony of consciousness.
Argument from the General Judgment of Men.
2. It may, however, be said that our consciousness or moral
judgments are influenced by our Christian education. It is there-
fore important to observe, in the second place, that this judgment
of our individual consciousness is confirmed by the universal judg-
ment of our fellow-men. This is plain from the fact that in all
known languages there are words to distinguish between dispo-
sitions, principles, or habits, as permanent states of the mind, and
voluntary acts. And these dispositions are universally recognized
as being either good or bad. Language is the product of the com-
mon consciousness of men. There could not be such terms as
benevolence, justice, integrity, and fidelity, expressing principles
§ 6.] PELAGIAN AND RATIONALISTIC DOCTRINE. 109
which determine acts, and which are not themselves acts, if men
did not intuitively recognize the fact that principles as well as acts
may have moral character.
The Moral Character of Acts determined by the Principles
whence they flow.
3. So far from its being true that in the judgment of men the
voluntary act alone constitutes character, the very opposite is true.
The character of the act is decided by the nature of the principle
by which it is determined. If a man gives alms, or worships God
from a selfish principle, under the control of a disposition to secure
the applause of men, those acts instead of being good are instinct-
ively recognized as evil. Indeed, if this Pelagian or Rationalistic
principle were true, there could be no such thing as character ;
not only because individual acts have no moral quality except such
as is derived from the principle whence they flow, but also because
character necessarily supposes something permanent and control-
ling. A man without character is a man without principles ; i. e.,
in whom there is nothing which gives security as to what his acts
will be.
Argument from Scripture.
4. The Scriptures in this, as in all cases, recognize the validity
of the intuitive and universal judgments of the mind. They
everywhere distinguish between principles and acts, and every-
where attribute moral character to the former, and to acts only so
far as they proceed from principles. This is the doctrine of our
Lord when he says, " Either make the tree good, and his fruit
good ; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt : for a
tree is known by his fruit." (Matt. xii. 33.) " A good tree can-
not bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth
good fruit." (Matt. vii. 18.) It is the inward, abiding character
of the tree that determines the character of the fruit. The fruit
reveals, but does not constitute, the nature of the tree. So it is,
he tells us, with the human heart. " How can ye, being evil,
speak good things ? For out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the
heart, bringeth forth good things : and an evil man, out of the evil
treasure, bringeth forth evil things." (Matt. xii. 34, 35.) A good
man, therefore, is one who is inwardly good : who has a good
heart, or nature, something within him which being good in itself,
produces good acts. And an evil man is one, whose heart, that is,
the abiding, controlling state of his mind, being in itself evil, hab-
110 PART n. Ch. v. — original state of man.
itually does evil. It is out of the heart proceed evil tlioughts, mur-
ders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies.
These terms include all voluntary acts, not only in the sense of
deliberate self-determination, but also in the sense of spontaneous
acts. They moreover include all conscious states of the mind. It
is, therefore, expressly asserted by our Lord, that moral character
attaches to what lies deeper than any acts of the will, in the widest
sense of those words, but also to that which lies lower than con-
sciousness. As the greater part of our knowledge is treasured up
where consciousness does not reach, so the greater part of what con-
stitutes our character as good or evil, is lower not only than the
will but even than consciousness itself. It is not only however by
direct assertion that this doctrine is taught in the Bible. It is con-
stantly assumed, and is involved in some of the most important
doctrines of the word of God. It is taken for granted in what is
taught of the moral condition in which men are born into this
world. They are said to be conceived in sin. They are children
of wrath by nature. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, {. e.,
carnal, morally corrupt. The Bible also speaks of indwelling sin ;
of sin as a principle which brings forth fruit unto death. It repre-
sents regeneration not as an act of the soul, but as the production
of a new nature, or holy principle, in the heart. The denial,
therefore, that dispositions or principles as distinguished from acts,
can have a moral character, subverts some of the most plainly
revealed doctrines of the sacred Scriptures.
The Faith of the Church on this Subject.
5. It is fair on this subject to appeal to the universal faith of the
Church. Even the Greek Church, which has the lowest form of
doctrine of any of the great historical Christian communities,
teaches that men need regeneration as soon as they are born, and
that by regeneration a change of nature is effected, or a new prin-
ciple of life is infused into the soul. So also the Latin Church,
however inconsistently, recognizes the truth of the doctrine in
question in all her teachings. All who die unbaptized, according to
Romanists, perish ; and by baptism not only the guilt, but also the
pollution of sin is removed, and new habits of grace are infused
into the soul. It is needless to remark that the Lutheran and
Reformed churches agree in holding this important doctrine, that
moral character does not belong exclusively to voluntary acts, but
extends to dispositions, principles, or habits of the mind. This is
involved in all their authoritative decisions concerning original
righteousness, original sin, regeneration, and sanctification.
§6.] PELAGIAN AND RATIONALISTIC DOCTRINE. Ill
The Moral Character of Dispositions depends on their Nature
arid not on their Origin.
The second great principle involved in the Scriptural doctrine
on this subject is, that the moral character of dispositions or habits
depends on their nature and not on their origin. There are some
who endeavour to take a middle ground between the rationalistic
and the evangelical doctrines. They admit that moral character
may be predicated of dispositions as distinguished from voluntary
acts, but they insist that this can only be done when such dispo-
sitions have been self-acquired. They acknowledge that the fre-
quent repetition of certain acts has a tendency to produce an
abiding disposition to perform them. This is acknowledged to be
true not only in regard to the indulgence of sensual appetites, but
also in regard to purely mental acts. Not only does the frequent
use of intoxicating liquors produce an inordinate craving for them,
but the frequent exercise of pride or indulgence of vanity, con-
firms and strengthens a proud and vainglorious spirit, or state of
mind ; which state of mind, when thus produced, it is admitted,
goes to determine or constitute the man's moral character. But
they deny that a man can be responsible for any disposition, or
state of mind, which is not the result of his own voluntary agency.
In opposition to this doctrine, and in favour of the position that the
moral character of dispositions, or principles, does not depend upon
their origin, that whether concreated, innate, infused, or self-ac-
quired they are good or bad according to their nature, the arguments
are the same in kind as those presented under the preceding head.
1. The first is derived from our consciousness. In our judg-
ments of ourselves the question is what we are, and not how we
became what we know ourselves to be. If conscious that we do
not lyve God as we ought ; that we are worldly, selfish, proud, or
suspicious, it is no relief to the consciousness, that such has been
our character from the beginning. We may know that we were
born with these evil dispositions, but they are not on that account
less evil in the sight of conscience. We groan under the burden
of hereditary, or of indwelling sin, as deeply and as intelligently as
under tiie pressure of our self-acquired evil dispositions. So also
in our instinctive judgments of other men. If a man be addicted
to frivolous pursuits, we pronounce him a frivolous man, without
stopping to inquire whether his disposition be innate, derived by
inheritance from his ancestors, or whether it was acquired. On
the contrary, if he manifests from his youth a disposition for the
k
112 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
acquisition of knowledge, he is an object of respect, no matter
whence that disposition was derived. The same is true with re-
gard to amiable or unamiable dispositions. It cannot be denied that
there is a great difference in men in this respect. Some are morose,
irritable, and unsocial in their dispositions, others are directly
the reverse. The one class is attractive, the other repulsive ; the
one the object of affection ; the other, of dislike. The instinctive
judgment of the mind is the same with regard to dispositions more
clearly moral in their nature. One man is selfish, another gen-
erous ; one is malicious, anotlier benevolent ; one is upright and
honourable, another deceitful and mean. They may be born with
these distinctive traits of character, and such traits beyond doubt
are in numerous cases innate and often hereditary, and yet we are
conscious that our judgment regarding them and those to whom
they belong is entirely independent of the question whether such
dispositions are natural or acquired. It is admitted that nations as
well as tribes and families, have their distinctive characteristics,
and that these characteristics are not only physical and mental, but
also social and moral. Some tribes are treacherous and cruel.
Some are mild and confiding. Some are addicted to gain, others
to war. Some are sensual, some intellectual. We instinctively
judge of each according to its character ; we like or dislike, ap-
prove or disapprove, without asking ourselves any questions as to
the origin of these distinguishing characteristics. And if we do
raise that question, although we are forced to answer it by admit-
ting that these dispositions are innate and hereditary, and that they
are not self-acquired by the individual whose character they con-
stitute, we nevertheless, and none the less, approve or condemn
them according to their nature. This is the instinctive and neces-
sary, and therefore the correct, judgment of the mind.
This the Oommon Rule of Judgment.
2. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to
man. What we find revealed in our own consciousness we find
manifested as the consciousness of our fellow men. It is the
instinctive or intuitive judgment of all men that moral dispositions
derive their character from their nature, and not from their origin.
In the ordinary language of men, to say that a man is naturally
proud or malicious is not an extenuation, but an aggravation. The
more deeply these evil principles are seated in his nature, and the
less tliey depend upon circumstances or voluntary action, the more
profound is our abhorrence and the more severe is our condem-
§6.] PELAGIAN AND RATIONALISTIC DOCTRINE. 113
nation. The Irish people have always been remarkable for their
fidelity ; the English for honesty ; the Germans for truthfulness.
These national traits, as revealed in individuals, are not the effect
of self-discipline. They are innate, hereditary dispositions, as obvi-
ously as the physical, mental, or emotional peculiarities by which
one people is distinguished from another. And yet by the common
judgment of men this fi^ct in no degree detracts from the moral
character of these dispositions.
The Testimony of Scripture.
3. This also is the plain doctrine of the Bible. The Scriptures
teach that God made man upright ; that the angels were created
holy, for the unholy angels are those which kept not their first
estate ; that since the fall men are bom in sin ; that by the power
of God, and not by the power of the will, the heart is changed, and
new dispositions are implanted in our nature ; and yet the Bible
always speaks of the sinful as sinful and worthy of condemnation,
whether, as in the case of Adam, that sinfulness was self-acquired,
or, as in the case of his posterity, it is a hereditary evil. It always
speaks of the holy as holy, whether so created as were the angels,
or made so by the supernatural power of the Spirit in regeneration
and sanctification. And in so doing the Bible, as we have seen,
does not contradict the intuitive judgment of the human mind,
but sanctions and confirms that judgment.
The Faith of the Church.
4. It need hardly be added that such also is the faith of the Church
universal. All Christian churches receive the doctrines of original
sin and regeneration in a form which involves not only the principle
that dispositions, as distinguished from acts, may have a moral char-
acter, but also that such character belongs to them whether they be
innate, acquired, or infused. It is, therefore, most unreasonable
to assume the ground that a man can be responsible only for his
voluntary acts, or for their subjective effects, when our own con-
sciousness, the universal judgment of men, the word of God, and
the Church universal, so distinctly assert the contrary. It is a
matter of surprise how subtle is the poison of the principle which
has now been considered. It is not only the fundamental principle
of Pelagianism, but it is often asserted bv orthodox theologians who
do not carry it out to its legitimate results, but who, nevertheless,
tallow it injuriously to modify their views of some of the most impor-
tant doctrines of the Bible. On the assumption that no man can be
VOL. II. 8
;
114 PART II. Cii. v.— ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
judged, can be either justified or condemned except on the ground
of his self-acquired personal character, they teach that there can be
no immediate imputation of the sin of Adam or of the righteousness
of Christ ; that the only ground of condemnation must be our self-
acquired sinfulness, and the only ground of justification our sub-
jective righteousness ; thus subverting two of the main pillars of
evangelical truth.
Objections Considered.
The difficulty on this subject arises in great measure from con-
founding two distinct thinss. It is one thino; that a creatui-e should
be treated according to his character ; and quite another thing to
account for his having that character. If a creature is holy he will
be regarded and treated as holy. Jf he is sinful, he will be regarded
and treated as sinful. If God created Adam holy He could not
treat him as unholy. If He created Satan sinful, He would regard
him as sinful ; and if men are born in sin they cannot be regarded
as free from sin. The difficulty is not in God's treating liis creatures
according to their true character, but in reconciling with his holiness
and justice that a sinful character should be acquired without the
creature's personal agency. If God had created Satan sinful he
would be sinful, but we should not know how to reconcile it with
the character of God that he should be so created. And if men
are born in sin the difficulty is not in their being regarded and
treated as sinful, but in their beino; thus born. The Bible teaches
us the solution of this difficulty. It reveals to us the principle of
representation, on the ground of which the penalty of Adam's
sin has come upon his posterity as the reward of Christ's righteous-
ness comes upon his people. In the one case the penalty brings
subjective sinfulness, and in the other the reward brings subjective
holiness.
It is a common objection to the doctrine that holiness can be
concreated and sinfulness hereditary, that it makes sin and holiness
substances. There is nothing in the soul, it is said, but its substance
and its acts. If sin or holiness be predicated of anything but the
acts of the soul it must be predicated of its substance ; and thus we
have the doctrine of physical holiness and physical depravity. The
assumption on which this objection rests is not only an arbitrary
one, but it is obviously erroneous. There are in the soul, (1.) Its
substance. (2.) Its essential ])roperties or attributes, as reason,
sensibility, and will, without which it ceases to be a human soul.
(3.) Its constitutional dispositions, or natural tendencies to exercise
§6.] PELAGIAN AND RATIONALISTIC DOCTRINE. 115
certain feelings and volitions, such as self-love, the sense of justice,
the social principle, parental and filial affection. These, although
not essential to man, are nevertheless found in all men, before and
after the fall. (4.) The peculiar dispositions of individual men,
which are accidental, that is, they do not belong to humanity as such.
They may be present or absent ; they may be innate or acquired.
Such are the taste for music, painting, or poetry ; and the skill of
the artist or the mechanist ; such also are covetousness, pride,
vanity, and the like ; and such, too, are the graces of the Spirit,
humility, meekness, gentleness, faith, love, etc. As the taste for
music is neither an act nor a substance, so pride is neither the one
nor the other. Nor is the maternal instinct an act ; nor is benevo-
lence or covetousness. These are immanent, abiding states of the
mind. They belong to the man, whether they are active or dormant,
whether he is awake or asleep. There is something in the sleeping
artist which renders it certain that he will enjoy and execute what
other men can neither perceive nor do. And that something is
neither the essence of his soul nor an act. It is a natural or acquired
taste and skill. So there is something in the sleeping saint which
is neither essence nor act, which renders it certain that he will love
and serve God. As therefore there are in the soul dispositions,
principles, habits, and tastes which cannot be regarded as mere acts,
and yet do not belong to the essence of the soul, it is plain that the
doctrine of original or concreated righteousness is not liable to the
objection of making moral character a substance.
Pelagians teach that Man was created Mortal.
The second distinguishing feature of the Pelagian or Rationalistic
doctrine as to man's original state, is that man was created mortal.
By this it Is meant to deny that death Is the consequence or penalty
of transgression ; and to affirm that Adam was liable to death, and
certainly would have died In virtue of the original constitution of
his nature. The arguments urged in support of this doctrine are,
(1.) That the corporeal organization of Adam was not adapted to
last forever. It was in its very nature perlsiiable. It required to
be constantly refreshed by sleep and renewed by food, and would
by a natural and Inevitable process have grown old and decayed.
(2.) That all other animals living on the earth evince In their con-
stitution and structure that they were not intended by their Creator
to live on Indefinitely. They were created male and female, designed
to propagate their race. This proves that a succession of invllvld-
uals, and not the continued existence of the same Individuals, was
116 PART II. Ch. v. — original STATE OF MAN.
the plan of the Creator. As this is true of man as well as of other
animals, it is evident, thej say, that man also was from the begin-
ning, and irrespective of sin, destined to die. (3.) An argument
is drawn from what the Apostle teaches in 1 Cor. xv. 42-50.
It is thei'e said that the first man is of the earth earthy ; that he
had a natural body (a o-w/xa xpuxiKov) as opposed to a spiritual body
(the 0-w/x.a TTveu/xartKov) ; that the 'former is not adapted to immor-
tality, that flesh and blood, i. e., the a-w/xa {{rvxixov, such as Adam had
when created, cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. From this
account it is inferred that Adam was not created for immortality,
but was originally invested with a body from its nature destined to
decay.
Answer to the Pelagian Arguments.
With regard to this subject it is to be remarked that there are
two distinct points to be considered. First, whether Adam would
have died had he not sinned ; and second, whether his body as orig-
inally formed was adapted to an immortal state of existence. As
to the former there can be no doubt. It is expressly asserted in
Scripture that death is the wages of sin. In the threatening, " In
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," it is plainly
implied that if he did not eat he should not die. It is clear there-
fore from the Scriptures that death is the penal consequence of sin,
and would not have been inflicted, had not our fii'st parents trans-
gressed. The second point is much less clear, and less important.
According to one view adopted by many of the fathers, Adam was
to pass his probation in the earthly paradise, and if obedient, was
to be translated to the heavenly paradise, of which the earthly was
the type. According to Luther, the effect of the fruit of the tree
of life of which our first parents would have been permitted to eat
had they not sinned, would have been to preserve their bodies in
perpetual youth. According to others, the body of Adam and the
bodies of his posterity, had he maintained his integrity, would have
undei'gone a change analogous to that which, the Apostle teaches
us, awaits those who shall be alive at the second coming of Christ.
They shall not die, but they all shall be changed ; the corruptible
shall put on incorruption, and the mortal shall put on immortality.
Two things are certain, first, that if Adam had not sinned he would
not have died ; and secondly, that if the Apostle, when he says
we have borne the image of the earthly, means that our present
bodies are like the body of Adam as originally constituted, then
his body no less than ours, required to be changed to fit it for im-
mortality.
CHAPTER VI.
COVENANT OF WORKS.
God having created man after his own image in knowledge,
righteousness, and holiness, entered into a covenant of life with
him, upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil upon the pain of death.
According to this statement, (1.) God entered into a covenant
with Adam. (2.) The promise annexed to that covenant was
life. (3.) The condition was perfect obedience. (4.) Its penalty
was death.
§ 1. God entered into Covenant with Adam.
This statement does not rest upon any express declaration of the
Scriptures. It is, however, a concise and correct mode of
asserting a plain Scriptural fact, namely, that God made to
Adam a promise suspended upon a condition, and attached to dis-
obedience a certain penalty. This is what in Scriptural language
is meant by a covenant, and this is all that is meant by the term
as here used. Although the word covenant is not used in Genesis,
and does not elsewhere, in any clear passage, occur in reference to
the transaction there recorded, yet inasmuch as the plan of salvation
is constantly represented as a New Covenant, new, not merely in
antithesis to that made at Sinai, but new in reference to all legal
covenants whatever, it is plain that the Bible does represent the
arrangement made with Adam as a truly federal transaction. The
Scriptures know notliing of any other than two methods of at-
taining eternal life : the one that which demands perfect obe-
dience, and the other that which demands faith. If the latter is
called a covenant, the former is declared to be of the same nature.
It is of great importance that the Scriptural form of presenting
truth should be retained. Rationalism was introduced into, the
Church under the guise of a philosophical statement of the truths
of the Bible free from the mere outward form in which the sacred
writers, trained in Judaism, had presented them. On tliis ground
the federal system, as it was called, was discarded. On the same
118 PART II. Ch. VI. — the covenant OF WORKS.
ground the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices of Christ were
pronounced a cumbrous and unsatisfactory form under which to
set forth his work as our Redeemer. And then the sacrificial
character of his death, and all idea of atonement were rejected as
mere Jewisli drapery. Thus, by the theory of accommodation,
every distinctive doctrine of the Scriptures was set aside, and
Christianity reduced to Deism. It is, therefore, far more than a
mere matter of method tliat is involved in adhering to the Scrip-
tural form of presenting Scriptural truths.
God then did enter into a covenant with Adam. That cove-
nant is sometimes called a covenant of life, because life was prom-
ised as the reward of obedience. Sometimes it is called the cov-
enant of works, because works were the condition on which that
promise was suspended, and because it is thus distinguished from
the new covenant which promises life on condition of faith.
§ 2. The Promise.
The reward promised to Adam on condition of his obedience,
was life. (1.) This is involved in the threatening : " In the day
that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." It is plain that
this involved the assurance that he should not die, if he did not eat.
(2.) This is confirmed by innumerable passages and by the gen-
eral drift of Scripture, in which it is so plainly and so variously
taught, that life was, by the ordinance of God, connected with
obedience. " This do and thou shalt live." " The man that
doeth them shall live by them." This is the uniform mode in
which the Bible speaks of that law or covenant under which man
by the constitution of his nature and by the ordinance of God, was
placed. (3.) As the Scriptures everywhere present God as a judge
or moral ruler, it follows of necessity from that representation, that
his rational creatures will be dealt with according to the principles
of justice. If there be no transgression there will be no punish-
ment. And those who continue holy thereby continue in the fa-
vour and fellowship of him whose favour is life, and Avhose loving-
kindness is better than life. (4.) And finally, holiness, or as the
Apostle expi-esses it, to be spiritually minded, is life. There can
therefore be no doubt, that had Adam continued in holiness, he
would have enjoyed that life which flows from the favour of God.
The life thus promised included the happy, holy, and immortal
existence of the soul and body. This is plain. (1.) Because the
life promised was that suited to the being to whom the promise was
made. But the life suited to man as a moral and intellio-ent be-
§3.] CONDITION OF THE COVENANT. 119
ing, composed of soul and body, includes the happy, holy, and im-
mortal existence of his whole nature. (2.) The life of which the
Scriptures everywhere speak as connected with obedience, is that
which, as just stated, flows from the favour and fellowship of God,
and includes glory, honour, and immortality, as the Apostle teaches
us in Romans ii. 7. (3.) The life secured by Christ for his people
was the life forfeited by sin. But the life which the believer
derives from Christ is spiritual and eternal life, the exaltation and
complete blessedness of his whole nature, both soul and body.
§ 3. Condition of the Covenant.
The condition of the covenant made with Adam is said in the
symbols of our church to be perfect obedience. That that state-
ment is correct may be inferred (1.) From the nature of the case
and from the general principles clearly revealed in the word of
God. Such is the nature of God, and such the relation which He
sustains to his moral creatures, that sin, the transgression of the
divine law, must involve the destruction of the fellowship between
man and his Creator, and the manifestation of the divine displeas-
ure. The Apostle therefore says, that he who offends in one
point, who breaks one precept of the law of God, is guilty of the
wliole. (2.) It is everywhere assumed in the Bible, that the con-
dition of acceptance under the law is perfect obedience. " Cursed
is every one who continueth not in all thing-s written in the book
of the law to do them." This is not a peculiarity of the Mosaic
economy, but a declaration of a principle which applies to all di-
vine laws. (3.) The whole argument of the Apostle in his epistles
to the Romans and to the Galatians, is founded on the assumption
that the law demands perfect obedience. If that be not granted,
his whole argument falls to the ground.
The specific command to Adam not to eat of a certain tree, was
therefore not the only command he was required to obey. It was
given simply to be the outward and visible test to determine
whether he was willing to obey God in all things. Created holy,
with all his affections pure, there was the more reason that the test
of his obedience should be an outward and positive command ;
something wrong simply because it was forbidden, and not evil in
its own nature. It would thus be seen that Adam obeyed for the
sake of obeying. His obedience was more directly to God, and
not to his own reason.
The question whether perpetual, as well as perfect obedience
was the condition of the covenant made with Adam, is probably to
120 PART U. Ch. VI. — the covenant OF WORKS.
be' answered in the negative. It seems to be reasonable in itself
and plainly implied in the Scriptures that all rational creatures
have a definite period of probation. If faithful during that period
they are confirmed in their integrity, and no longer exposed to the
danger of apostasy. Thus we read of the angels wlio kept not
their first estate, and of those who did. Those who remained
faithful have continued in holiness and in the favour of God. It is
therefore to be inferred that had Adam continued obedient during
the period allotted to his probation, neither he nor any of his pos-
terity would have been ever exposed to the danger of sinning.
§ 4. The Penalty.
The penalty attached to the covenant i» expressed by the com-
prehensive tei'm death. " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die." That this does not refer to the mere dissolution
of the body, is plain. (1.) Because the word death, as used in Scrip-
ture in reference to the consequences of transgression, includes all
penal evil. The wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth, it
shall die. Any and every form of evil, therefore, which is inflicted
as the punishment of sin, is comprehended under tlie word death.
(2.) The death threatened was the opposite of the life promised.
But the life promised, as we have seen, includes all that is involved
in the happy, holy, and immortal existence of the soul and body ;
and therefore death must include not only all the miseries of this life
and the dissolution of the body, but also all that is meant by spirit-
ual and eternal death. (3.) God is the life of the soul. His favour
and fellowship with him, are essential to its holiness and happiness.
If his favour be forfeited, the inevitable consequences are the death
of the soul, i. g., its loss of spiritual life, and unending sinfulness
and misery. (4.) The nature of the penalty threatened is learned
from its infliction. The consequences of Adam's sin were the loss
of the image and favour of God and all the evils which flowed
from that loss. (5.) Finally, the death which was incurred by the
sin of our first parents, is that from which we are redeemed by
Christ. Christ, however, does not merely deliver the body from
the grave, he saves the soul from spiritual and eternal death ; and
therefore spiritual and eternal death, together with tlie dissolution
of the body and all the miseries of this life, were included in the
penalty originally attached to the covenant of works. In the day
in which Adam ate the forbidden fruit he did die. The penalty
threatened was not a momentary infliction but permanent subjec-
tion to all the evils which flow from the righteous displeasure of
God.
§5.] THE PARTIES. 121
§ 5. The Parties to the Covenant of Works.
It lies in the nature of a covenant that there must be two or
more parties. A covenant is not of one. The parties to the orioji-
nal covenant were God and Adam. Adam, however, acted not in
his individual capacity but as the head and representative of his
whole race. This is plain. (1.) Because everything said to him
had as much reference to his posterity as to Adam himself. Every-
thing granted to him was granted to them. Everything promised
to him was pi'omised to them. And everything threatened against
him, in case of transgression, was threatened against them. God
did not give the earth to Adam for him alone, but as the heritage
of his race. The dominion over the lower animals with which
he was invested belonged equally to his descendants. The prom-
ise of life embraced them as well as him ; and the threatening of
death concerned them as Avell as him. (2.) In the second place, it
is an outstanding undeniable fact, that the penalty which Adam
incurred has fallen upon his whole race. The earth is cursed to
them as it was to him. They must earn their bread by the sweat
of their brows. The pains of childbirth are the common heritage
of all the daughters of Eve. All men are subject to disease and
death. All are born in sin, destitute of the moral image of God.
There is not an evil consequent on the sin of Adam which does not
affect his race as much as it affected him. (3.) Not only did the
ancient Jews infer the representative character of Adam from the
record given in Genesis, but the inspired writers of the New Testa-
ment give this doctrine the sanction of divine authority. In
Adam, says the Apostle, all died. The sentence of condemnation,
he teaches us, passed on all men for one offence. By the offence
of one all were made sinners. (4.) This great fact is made the
ground on which the whole plan of redemption is founded. As we
fell in Adam, we are saved in Christ. To deny the principle in the
one case, is to deny it in the other ; for the two are inseparably
united in the representations of Scripture. (5.) The principle in-
volved in the headship of Adam underlies all the religious institu-
tions ever ordained by God for men ; all his providential dealings
with our race ; and even the distributions of the saving influences
of his Spirit. It is therefore one of the fundamental principles
both of natural and of revealed religion. (6.) What is thus clearly
revealed in the word and providence of God, finds a response in
the very constitution of our nature. All men are led as it were
instinctively to recognize the validity of this principle of representa-
122 PART II. Ch. VI. — the covenant OF WORKS.
tion. Rulers represent their people ; parents their children ;
guardians their wards. All these considerations are in place here,
when the nature of the covenant of works, and the parties to that
covenant are under discussion, although of course they must come
up again to be more fully examined, when we have to speak of the
effects of Adam's sin upon his posterity. Men may dispute as to
the grounds of the headship of Adam, but the fact itself can hardly
be questioned by those who recognize the authority of the Scrip-
tures. It has therefore entered into the faith of all Christian
churches, and is more or less clearly presented in all their author-
ized symbols.
§ 6. Perpe-tuity of the Covenant of WorTcs.
If Adam acted not only for himself but also for his posterity,
that fact determines the question. Whether the covenant of works
be still in force. In the obvious sense of the terms, to say that
men are still under that covenant, is to say that they are still on
probation; that the race did not fall when Adam fell. But if
Adam acted as the head of the wliole race, then all men stood
their probation in him, and fell with him in his first transgression.
Tlie Scriptures, therefore, teach that we come into the world under
condemnation. We are by nature, i. e., as we were born, the
children of wrath. This fact is assumed in all the provisions of the
gospel and in all the institutions of our religion. Children are
required to be baptized for the remission of sin. But while the
Pelagian doctrine is to be rejected, which teaches that each man
comes into the world free from sin and free from condemnation,
and stands his probation in his own person, it is nevertheless true
that where there is no sin there is no condemnation. Hence our
Lord said to the young man, " This do and thou shalt live." And
hence the Apostle in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Ro-
mans, says that God will reward every man according to his works.
To those who are good. He will give eternal life ; to those who are
evil, indignation and wrath. This is only saying that the eternal
principles of justice are still in foi'ce. If any man can present him-
self before the bar of God and prove that he is free from sin, either
imputed or personal, either original or actual, he will not be con-
demned. But the fact is that the whole world lies in wickedness.
Man is an apostate race. Men are all involved in the penal and
natural consequences of Adam's transgression. They stood their
probation in him, and do not stand each man for himself.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FALL.
The Scriptural Account.
The Scriptural account of the Fall, as given in the book of Gen-
esis, is. That God placed Adam in "the garden of Eden to dress
it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree
of the knowlede[e of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die Now
the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the
Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath
God said. Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? And the
woman said unto the serpent. We may eat of the fruit of the trees of
the garden : but of the fruit of the tree which is in tlie midst of
the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye
touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman. Ye
shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened ; and ye shall be as gods
(as God), knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and tliat it was pleasant to the eyes^
and a tree to be desired to make wise ; she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat : and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did
eat."
The consequences of this act of disobedience were, (1.) An
immediate sense of guilt and shame. (2.) The desire and effort
to hide themselves from the face of God. (3.) The denunciation
and immediate execution of the righteous judgment of God upon
the serpent, upon the man, and upon the woman. (4.) Expulsion
from the garden of Eden and prohibition of access to the Tree of
Life.
Tliat this account of tlie probation and fall of man is neither
an allegory nor a myth, but a true history, is evident, (1.) From
internal evidence. Wlien contrasted witii the mythological accounts
of the creation and origin of man as found in the records of early
heathen nations, whether Oriental, Grecian, or Etruscan, the differ-
124 PART II. Ch. VL — the fall.
ence is at once apparent. The latter are evidently the product of
crude speculation, the Scriptural account is simple, intelligible, and
pregnant with the highest truths. (2.) From the fact not only
that it is presented as a matter of history in a book which all
Christians recognize as of divine authority, but that it also forms an
integral part of the book of Genesis, which is confessedly historical.
It is the first of the ten divisions into which that book, in its internal
structure, is divided, and belongs essentially to its plan. (3.) It is not
only an essential part of the book of Genesis, but it is also an essen-
tial part of Scriptural history as a whole, which treats of the origin,
apostasy, and development of the human race, as connected with
the plan of redemption. (4.) We accordingly find that both in
the Old and New Testaments the facts here recorded are assumed,
and referred to as matters of history. (5.) And finally, these facts
underlie the whole doctrinal system revealed in the Scriptures.
Our Lord and his Apostles refer to them not only as true, but as
furnishing the ground of all the subsequent revelations and dispen-
sations of God. It was because Satan tempted man and led him
into disobedience that he became the head of the kingdom of
darkness ; Avhose power Christ came to destroy, and from whose
dominion he redeemed his people. It was because we died in
Adam that we must be made alive in Christ. So that the Church
universal has felt bound to receive the record of Adam's temptation
and fill as a true historical account.
There are many who, while admitting the historical character of
this account, still regard it as in a great measure figurative. They
understand it as a statement not so much of external events as of
an internal process of thought ; explaining how it was that Eve
came to eat of the forbidden tree and to induce Adam to join
in her transgression. They do not admit that a serpent was the
tempter, or that he spoke to Eve, but assume that she was attracted
by the beauty of the forbidden object, and began to question in her
own mind either the fact or the justice of the prohibition. But
there is not only no valid reason for departing from the literal
interpretation of the passage, but that interpretation is supported
by the authority of the writers of the New Testament. They
recognize the serpent as present, and as the agent in the temptation
and lall of our first parents.
TJie Tree of Life.
According to the sacred narrative, there were two trees standing
side by side in the garden of Eden which had a peculiar symbolical
THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 125
or sacramental character. The one was called the Tree of Life,
the other the Tree of Knowledge. The former was the symbol of
life, and its fruit was not to be eaten except on the condition of
man's retaining his integrity. Whether the fruit of that tree
had inherent virtue to impart life, i. e., to sustain the body of
man in its youthful vigour and beauty, or gradually to refine it
until it should become like to what the glorified body of Christ
now is, or whether the connection between eating its fruit and
immortality was simply conventional and sacramental, we cannot
determine. It is enough to know that partaking of that tree
secured in some way the enjoyment of eternal life. That this was
the fact is plain, not only because man after his transgression was
driven from paradise " lest he put forth his hand, and take also of
the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" (Gen. iii. 22); but also
because Christ is called the Tree of Life. He is so called because
that tree was typical of Him, and the analogy is, that as He is the
source of life, spiritual and eternal, to his people, so that tree was
appointed to be the source of life to the first parents of our race
and to all their descendants, had tliey not rebelled against God.
Our Lord promises (Rev. ii. 7) to give to them who overcome, to
eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
In heaven there is said (Rev. xxii. 2) to be a tree of life, whose
leaves are for the healing of the nations ; and again (verse 14),
" Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have
right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into
the city." The symbolical and typical import of the tree of life is
thus clear. As paradise was the type of heaven, so the tree wliich
would have secured immortal life to obedient Adam in that teri-es-
trial paradise is the type of Him who is the source of spiritual and
eternal life to his people in the paradise above.
The Tree of Knowledge.
The nature and significancy of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil are not so clear. By the tree of knowledge, indeed, it is
altogether probable, we are to understand a tree the fruit of which
would impart knowledge. This may be inferred, (1.) Fi'om analogy.
As the tree of life sustained or imparted life, so the tree of knowledge
was appointed to communicate knowledge. (2.) From the sugges-
tion of the tempter, who assured the woman that eating of the fruit
of that tree would open her eyes. (3.) She so understood the
designation, for she regarded the tree as desirable to render wise.
(4.) The effect of eating of the forbidden fruit was that the eyes
L
126 PART II. Ch. VII. — the fall.
of the transgressors were opened. And (5.), in the twenty-second
verse, we read that God said of fallen man, " Behold, the man is
become as one of us, to know good and evil." Unless this be
understood ironically, which in this connection seems altogether
unnatural, it must mean that Adam had, by eating the forbidden
fruit, attained a knowledge in some respects analogous to tlie
knowledge of God, however different in its nature and effects.
This, therefore, seems plain from the whole narrative, that the tree
of knowledge was a tree the fruit of which imparted knowledge.
Not indeed from any inherent virtue, it may be, in the tree itself,
but from the appointment of God. It is not necessary to suppose
that the forbidden fruit had the power to corrupt either the corpo-
real or moral nature of man, and thus produce the experimental
knowledge of good and evil. All that the text requires is that
knowledge followed the eating of that fruit.
The words " good and evil " in this connection admit of three
interpretations. In the first place, in Scripture, the ignorance of
infancy is sometimes expressed by saying that a child cannot tell
its right hand from its left ; sometimes by saying, that he cannot
discern between the evil and the good. Thus in Deut. i. 39, it is
said, " Your cliildren .... had no knowledge between good and
evil," and in Is. vii. 16, " Before the child shall know to refuse the
evil and clioose the good." On the other hand maturity, whether
in intellectual or spiritual knowledge, is expressed by saying that one
has power to distinguish between good and evil. Thus the perfect or
mature believer has his " senses exercised to discern both good and
evil," Heb. v. 14. Agreeably to the analogy of these passages, the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, is simply the tree of knowledge.
The one expression is fully equivalent to the other. This inter-
pretation relieves the passage of many difficulties. It is sustained
also by the language of Eve, who said it was a tree desirable to
make wise. Before he sinned, Adam had the ignorance of happi-
ness and innocence. The happy do not know what sorrow is, and
the innocent do not know what sin is. When he ate of the for-
bidden tree he attained a knowledge he never had before. But, in
the second place the words, " good and evil " may be taken in a
moral sense. If this is so, the meaning cannot be that the fruit
of that tree was to lead Adam to a knowledge of the distinction be-
tween right and wrong, and thus awaken his dormant moral na-
ture. That knowledo;e he must have had from the bejiinning,
and was a good not to be proliibited. Some suppose that by the
knowledo;e of o-ood and evil is meant the knowledsxe of what thinjis
THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 127
are good and what are evil. This is a point determined for us by the
revealed will of God. Whatever He commands is good, and what-
ever He forbids is evil. The question is determined by authority.
We cannot answer it from the nature of things, nor by considera-
tions of expediency. Instead of submitting to the authority or law
of God as the rule of duty, it is assumed that Adam aspired to
know for himself what was good and what evil. It was emancipa-
tion from the trammels of authoritv that he sought. To this how-
ever, it may be objected tliat this was not the knowledge which he
attained by eating the forbidden fruit. He was told that his eyes
should be opened, that he should know good and evil ; and his
eyes were opened ; the promised knowledge was attained. That
knowledge, however, Avas not the ability to determine for himself
between riglit and wrong. He had less of that knowledge after
than before his fall. In the third place, " good and evil " may be
taken in a physical sense, for happiness and misery. Eating of the
forbidden tree was to determine the qiiestion of Adam's being
happy or miserable. It led to an experimental knowledge of the
difference. God knew the nature and effects of evil from his omnis-
cience. Adam could know them only from experience, and that
knowledge he gained when he sinned. Whichever of these partic-
ular interpretations be adopted, they all are included in the gen-
eral statement that the tree of knowledge gave Adam a knowledge
which he had not before ; he came to an experimental knowledge
of the difference between good and evil.
The Serpent.
It may be inferred from the narrative, that Adam was present
with Eve during the temptation. In Gen. iii. 6, it is said the
woman gave of the fruit of the tree to her husband who was " with
her." He was therefore a party to the whole transaction. When
it is said that a serpent addressed Eve, we are bound to take the
words in their literal sense. The serpent is neither a figurative
designation of Satan ; nor did Satan assume the form of a serpent.
A real serpent was the agent of the temptation, as it is plain from
what is said of tlie natural characteristics of the serpent in the first
verse of the chapter, and from the curse pronounced upon the ani-
mal itself, and the enmity wdiich was declared should subsist between
it and man through all time. But that Satan was the real tempter,
and that he used tlie serpent merely as his organ or instrument, is
evident, — (1.) From the nature of the transaction. What is here
attributed to the serpf^-nt fu- transcends the power of any irrational
128 PART n. Ch. VII. — THE FALL.
creature. The serpent maybe the most subtile of all the beasts of
the field, but he has not the high intellectual faculties which the
tempter here displays. (2.) In the New Testament it is both directly
asserted, and in various forms assumed, that Satan seduced our first
parents into sin. In Rev. xii. 9, it is said, " The great dragon was
cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which de-
ceiveth the whole world." And in xx. 2, " He laid hold on the
dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan." In 2
Cor. xi. 3, Paul says, "I fear lest .... as the sei*pent
beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so also your minds should be
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." But that by the
serpent he understood Satan, is plain from v. 14, where he speaks
of Satan as the great deceiver ; and what is said in Rom. xvi. 20,
" The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet," is in ob-
vious allusion to Gen. iii. 15. In John viii. 44, our Lord calls the
devil a murderer from the beginning, and the father of lies, because
through him sin and death were introduced into the world. Such
was also the faith of the Jewish Chui'ch. In the Book of Wisdom
il. 24, it is said, that " Through the envy of Satan came death
into the world." In the later Jewish writings this idea is often
presented.^
As to the serpent's speaking there is no more difficulty than in
the utterance of articulate words from Sinai, or the sounding of a
voice from heaven at the baptism of our Lord, or in the speaking
of Balaam's ass. The words uttered were produced by the power
of Satan, and of such effects produced by angelic beings good and
evil there are numerous instances in the Bible.
The Nature of the Temptation.
The first address of the tempter to Eve was designed to
awaken distrust in the goodness of God, and doubt as to the truth
of the prohibition. " Hath God indeed said, ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden ? " or, rather, as the words probably
mean, " Has God said, ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden ? "
The next address was a direct assault upon her faith. " Ye
shall not surely die ; " but on the contrary, become as God himself
in knowledge. To this temptation she yielded, and Adam joined
in the transgi-ession. From this account it appears that doubt, un-
belief, and pride were the principles which led to this fatal act of
disobedience. Eve doubted God's goodness ; she disbelieved his
threatening ; she aspired after forbidden knowledge.
1 See Eisenmenger, Endecktes Judenthum, edit. Konigsberg, 1711 ; i. p. 822.
THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 129
The Effects of the First Sin.
The effects of sin upon our first parents themselves, were, (1.)
Shame, a sense of degradation and pollution. (2.) Dread of the
displeasure of God ; or, a sense of guilt, and the consequent desire
to hide from his presence. These effects were unavoidable. They
prove the loss not only of innocence but of original righteousness,
and with it of the favour and fellowship of God. The state there-
fore to which Adam was reduced by his disobedience, so far as his
subjective condition is concerned, was analogous to that of the
fallen angels. He was entirely and absolutely ruined. It is said that
no man becomes thoroughly depraved by one transgression. In
one sense this is true. But one transgression by incurring the
wrath and curse of God and the loss of fellowship with Him, as ef-
fectually involves spiritual death, as one perforation of the heart
causes the death of the body ; or one puncture of the eyes involves
us in perpetual darkness. The other forms of evil consequent on
Adam's disobedience were merely subordinate. They were but
the expressions of the divine displeasure and the consequences of
that spiritual death in which the threatened penalty essentially
consisted.
CHAPTER VIII.
SIN.
§ 1. The Nature of the Question to he Considered.
Our first parents, we are told, fell from the estate wlierein they
were created by sinning against God. This presents the question,
whicii is one of the most difficult and comprehensive whether in
morals or in theology. What is sin ? The existence of sin is an
undeniable fact. No man can examine his own nature, or observe
the conduct of his fellow men, without having the conviction forced
upon him that there is such an evil as sin. This is not a purely
moral or theological question. It falls also within the province of
philosophy, which assumes to explain all the phenoniena of human
nature as well as of the external world. Philosophers, therefore,
of every age and of every school, have been compelled to discuss this
subject. The philosophical theories, as to the nature of sin, are as
numerous as the different schools of philosophy. This great ques-
tion comes under the consideration of the Christian theologian with
certain limitations. He assumes the existence of a personal God
of infinite perfection, and he assumes the responsibility of man.
No theory of the nature or origin of sin which conflicts with either
of these fundamental principles, can for him be true. Before
entering upon the statement of any of the theories which have
been more or less extensively adopted, it is important to ascertain
the data on which the answer to the question. What is sin ? is to
be determined ; or the premises from which that answer is to be
deduced. These are simply the declarations of the word of God
and the facts of our own moral nature. Ignoring either wholly or
in part these two sources of knowledge, many philosophers and
even theologians, have recourse to the reason, or rather to the
speculative understanding, for the decision of the question. This
method, however, is unreasonable, and is sure to lead to false con-
clusions, lu determining the nature of sensation we cannot adopt
the a jyriori method, and argue from the nature of a thing how it
ought to affect our organs of sense. We must assume the facts of
sense consciousness as the phenomena to be explained. We can-
§ 1.] THE NATURE OF SIN. 131
not say that such is the nature of h'ght that it cannot cause the
phenomena of vision ; or of acids that they cannot affect the
organs of taste ; or that our sensations are deceptive which lead us
to refer them to such causes. Nor can we determine philosophi-
cally the principles of beauty, and decide what men must admire
and what they must dislike. All that philosophy can do is take
the facts of our aesthetic nature and from them deduce the laws or
principles of beauty. In like manner the facts of our moral con-
sciousness must be assumed as true and trustworthy. We cannot
argue that such is the constitution of the universe, such the
relation of the individual to the whole, that there can be no such
thino; as sin, nothincr for which we should feel remorse or on the
ground of which we should apprehend punishment. Nor can we
adopt such a theory of moral obligation as forbids our recognizing
as sin what the conscience forces us to condemn. Any man
who should adopt such a theory of the sublime and beautiful, as
would demonstrate that Niagara and the Alps were not sublime
objects in nature ; or that the Madonna del Sisti or the Transfigu-
ration by Raphael are not beautiful productions of art ; or that
the " Iliad " and " Paradise Lost " are not worthy of the admira-
tion of ages, would lose his labour. And thus the man who
ignores the facfs of our moral nature in his theories of the origin
and nature of sin, must labour in vain. This, however, is con-
stantly done. It will be found that all the anti-theistic and anti-
chrlstian views of this subject are purely arbitrary speculations,
at war with the simplest and most undeniable facts of conscious-
ness.
With regard to the nature of sin, it is to be remarked that there
are two aspects in which the subject may be viewed. The first
concerns its metaphysical, and the second, its moral nature. What
is that which we call sin ? Is it a substance, a principle, or an
act ? Is it privation, negation, or defect ? Is it antagonism be-
tween mind and matter, between soul and body? Is it selfish-
ness as a feeling, or as a purpose ? All these are questions which
concern the metaphysical nature of sin, what it is as a res in
natura. Whereas such questions as the following concern rather
its moral nature, namely. What gives sin its character as moral
evil ? How does it stand related to law ? What law is it to
•wiiich sin is related ? What is its relation to the justice of God ?
What is its relation to his holiness? What has, or can have the
relation of sin to law ; is it acts of deliberation only, or also im-
pulsive acts and affections, emotions and principles, or dispositions''
132 PART n. Cii. VIIL — SIN.
It is obvious that these are moral, rather than metaphysical ques-
tions. In some of the theories on the nature of sin it is viewed
exclusively in one of these aspects ; and in some, exclusively in
the other ; and in some both views are combined. It is not pro-
posed to attempt to keep these views distinct as both are of neces-
sity involved in the theological discussion of the subject.
§ 2. Philosophical Theories of the Nature of Sin.
The first theory in the order of time, apart from the primitive
doctrine of tlie Bible, as to the origin and nature of sin, is the
dualistic, or that which assumes the existence of an eternal prin-
ciple of evil. This doctrine was widely disseminated througliout
the East, and in different forms was partially introduced into the
Christian church. According to the doctrine of the Parsis this
original principle was a personal being ; according to the Gnos-
tics, Marcionites, and Manicheans, it was a substance, an eternal
v\rq or matter. Augustine says, " Iste [Manes] duo principia inter
se diversa atque adversa, eademque seterna et coseterna, hoc est
semper fuisse, composuit : duasque naturas atque substantias, boni
scilicet et mail, sequens alios antiques haereticos, opinatus est." ^
These two principles are in perpetual conflict. In the actual world
they are intermingled. Both enter into the constitution of man.
He has a spirit (Trvev/xa) derived from the kingdom of light ; and
a body with its animal life (o-w/^a and ^^xn) derived from the
kingdom of darkness. Sin is thus a physical evil ; the defilement
of the spirit by its union with a material body ; and is to be over-
come by physical means, i. e., by means adapted to destroy the
influence of the body on the soul. Hence the efficacy of absti-
nence and austerities.^
This theory obviously is : (1.) Inconsistent with Theism, in
making something out of God eternal and independent of his will.
He ceases to be an infinite Being and an absolute sovereign. He
is everywhere limited by a coeternal power which He cannot con-
trol. (2.) It destroys the nature of sin as a moral evil, in making
it a substance, and in representing it as inseparable from the nature
of man as a creature composed of matter and spirit. (3.) It de-
stroys, of course, human responsibility, not only by making moral
evil necessary from the very constitution of man, and by referring
its origin to a source, eternal and necessarily operative ; but by
1 Liber de Haresibus, XLVi. ; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. viii. p. 48, d.
2 Baur's Manichean System. Neander's Church History, edit. Boston, 1849, vol. i. pp.
478-506. Miiller's Lehre von der Siinde, vol. i. pp. 504-518.
§2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 133
making it a substance, which destroys its nature as sin. This
theory is so thoroughly anti-theistic and anti-Christian, that
although long prevailing as a heresy in the Church, it never
entered into any living connection with Christian doctrine.
Sin regarded as a mere Limitation of Being.
The second anti-Christian theory of the nature of sin is that
which makes it a mere negation, or limitation of beino-. Beino-,
substaiice, is good. " Omne quod est, in quantum aliqua sub-
stantia est, et bonum [est],"^ says Augustine. God as the abso-
lute substance is the supreme good. The absolute evil would be
nothing. Therefore the less of being, the less of good ; and all
negation, or limitation of being is evil, or sin. Spinoza ^ says,
" Quo magis unusquisque, suum utile qugerere, hoc est suum esse
conservare conatur et potest, eo magis virtute prseditus est;
contra quatenus unusquisque suum utile, hoc est suum esse conser-
vare negligit, eatenus est impotens." In his demonstration of that
proposition he makes power and goodness identical, potentia
and virtus are the same. Hence the want of virtue, or evil, is
weakness, or limitation of being. Still more distinctly, does Pro-
fessor Baur of Tiibingen, present this view of the nature of sin.^
He says, " Evil is what is finite ; for the finite is negative ; the
negation of the infinite. Everything finite is relatively nothing ;
a negativity which, in the constant distinction of plus and miiius
of reality, appears in different forms." Again, " If freedom from
sin is the removal of all limitation, so is it clear, that only an end-
less series of gradations can bring us to the point where sin is
reduced to a vanishing minimum. If this minimum should entirely
disappear, then the being, thus entirely free from sin, becomes one
with God, for God only is absolutely sinless. But if other beings
than God are to exist, there must be in them, so far as they are
not infinite as God is, for that very reason, a minimum of evil."
The distinction between good and evil, is, therefore, merely quan-
titative, a distinction between more or less. Being is good, the limi-
tation of being is evil. This idea of sin lies in the nature of the
Pantheistic system. If God be the only substance, the only life,
the only agent, then He is the sum of all that is, or, rather all that
is, is the manifestation of God ; the form of his existence. Con-
sequently, if evil exists it is as much a form of the existence of
L
1 De Genesi ad Lileram, xi. xiii. 17 ; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. iii. p. 450, d.
2 Etkicis, Par. iv. propos. xx. ; Works, edit. Jena, 1803, vol. ii. p. 217.
3 In the Tubingen Zdtschrift, 1834, Drittes Heft.
134 PART n. Cu. AaiL — SIN.
God as good ; and can be nothing but imperfect development, or
mere limitation of being.
Tliis theory, it is clear, (1.) ignores the difference between the
malum metaphysicum and the malum morale, between the phys-
ical and the moral ; between a stunted tree and a wicked man.
Instead of explaining sin, it denies its existence. It is therefore in
conflict with the clearest of intuitive truths and the strongest of
our instinctive convictions. There is nothing of which we are more
sure, not even our own existence, than we are of the difference
between sin and limitation of being, between what is morally
wrong and what is a mere negation of power, (2.) This theory
assumes the truth of the pantheistic system of the universe, and
therefore is at variance with our religious nature, which demands
and assumes the existence of a personal God. (3.) In destroying
the idea of sin, it destroys all sense of moral obligation, and gives
unrestrained liberty to all evil passions. It not only teaches that
all that is, is right ; that everything that exists or happens has a
right to be, but that the only standard of virtue is power. The
strongest is the best. As Cousin says, the victor is always right ;
the victim is always wrong. The conqueror is always more moral
than the vanquished. Virtue and prosperity, misfortune and vice,
he says, are in necessary harmony. Feebleness is a vice (i. e., sin),
and therefore is always punished and beaten.^ This ])rinciple is
adopted by all such writers as Carlyle, who in their hero worship,
make the strong always the good ; and represent the murderer,
the pirate, and the persecutor, as always more moral and more
worthy of admiration than their victims. Satan is far more worthy
of homage than the best of men, as in him there is more of being
and power, and he is the seducer of angels and the destroyer of
men. A more thoroughly demoniacal system than this, the mind
of man has never conceived. Yet this system has not only its
philosophical advocates, and its practical disciples, but it percolates
through much of the popular literature both of Europe and
America.
Leibnitz's Theory of Privation.
Nearly allied in terms, but very diflferent in spirit and purpose
from this doctrine of Spinoza and his successors, is the theory of
Leibnitz, who also resolves sin into privation, and refers it to the
necessary limitation of being. Leibnitz, however, was a theist, and
his object in his "Thdodicde" was to vindicate God by proving that
1 History of Modern Philosophy, translation by Wight, New York, 1852, vol. i. pp.
182-187.
§2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 135
the existence of sin is consistent with his divine perfections. His
work is religious in its spirit and object, however erroneous and
dangerous in some of its principles. He assumed that this is the
best possible world. As sin exists in the world, it must be neces-
sary or unavoidable. It is not to be referred to the agency of God.
But as God is the universal agent according to Leibnitz's philoso-
phy, sin must be a simple negation or privation for which no effi-
cient cause is needed. These are the two points to be established.
First, that sin is unavoidable ; and secondly, that it is not due to
the agency of God. It is unavoidable, because it ai'ises out of
the necessary limitation of the creature. The creature cannot be
absolutely perfect. His knowledge and power must be limited.
But if limited, they must not only be liable to error, but error or
wrong action is unavoidable, or you would have absolutely perfect
action from a less than absolutely perfect agent ; the effect would
transcend the power of the cause. Evil, therefore, according to
Leibnitz, arises " par la supreme necessity des v^rites eternelles." ^
" Le franc-arbitre va au bien, et s'il rencontre le mal, c'est par
accident, c'est que le mal est cache sous le bien et comme masque."
The origin of evil is thus indeed referred to the will, but the will
is unavoidably, or of necessity led into error, by the limitations
inseparable from the nature of a creature. If, therefore, God cre-
ated a world at all, He must create one from which sin could not be
excluded. Such being the origin and nature of sin, it follows that
God is not its author. Providence, according to Leibnitz, is a con-
tinued creation (at least this is the view presented in some parts of
his " Thdodicde "2), therefore all that is positive and real must be
due to his agency. But sin being merely negation, or privation, is
nothing positive, and therefore does not need an efficient, but simply
a deficient cause to account for its existence. The similarity in mode
of statement between this doctrine and the Augustinian doctrine
which makes all sin defect, and which reconciles its existence with
the holiness of God on the same principle as that adopted by Leib-
nitz, is obvious to all. It is however merely a similarity in the
mode of expression. The two doctrines are essentially different, as
we shall see when the Augustinian theory comes to be considered.
With Augustine, defect is the absence of a moral good which the
creature should possess ; with Leibnitz, negation is the necessary
limitation of the powers of the creature.
The objections to this theory which makes sin mere privation,
1 Theodicee, i. 25, Works, edit. Berlin, 1840, p. 511.
2 Theodicee, i. 27, and iii. 381.
136 PART n. ch. vni.— sin.
and refers it to the nature of creatures as finite beings, are substan-
tially the same as those already presented as bearing against tiie
other theories before mentioned. (1.) In the first place, it makes
sin a necessary evil. Creatures ai^ of necessity imperfect or finite;
and if sin be the unavoidable consequence of such imperfection, or
limitation of being, sin also becomes a necessary evil. (2.) It makes
God after all the author of sin in so far as it throws upon Him the
responsibility for its existence. For even admitting that it is a
mere negation, requiring no efficient cause, nevertheless God is the
author of the limitation in the creature whence sin of necessity
flows. He has so constituted the works of his hand, that they
cannot but sin, just as the child cannot but err in its judgments.
Reason is so feeble even in the adult man that mistakes as to the
nature and causes of things are absolutely unavoidable. And if
sin be equally unavoidable from the very constitution of the crea-
ture, God, who is the author of that constitution, becomes responsi-
ble for its existence. This is not only derogatory to the character
of God, but directly opposed to the teachings of his Word. The
Bible never refers the origin of sin, whether in angels or in men,
to the necessary limitations of their being as creatures, but to the
perverted and inexcusable use of their own free agency. The
fallen angels kept not their first estate ; and man, being left to the
freedom of his own will, fell from the estate in which he was cre-
ated. (3.) This theory tends to obliterate the distinction between
moral and physical evil. If sin be mere privation, or if it be the
necessary consequence of the feebleness of the creature, it is the
object of pity rather than of abhorrence. In the writings of the
advocates of this theory the two senses of the words good and evil,
the moral and the physical, are constantly interchanged and con-
founded ; because evil according to their views is really little more
than a misfortune, an unavoidable mistake as to what is really good.
The distinction, however, between virtue and vice, holiness and
sin, as revealed in our consciousness and in the word of God, is
absolute and entire. Both are simple ideas. We know what
pain is from experience ; we know what sin is from the same
source. We know that the two are as different as day and night,
as light and sound. Any theory, therefore, which tends to con-
found them, must be false. Accordingly, in the Scriptures while
mere suffering is always presented as an object of commiseration,
sin is presented as an object of abhorrence and condemnation.
The wrath and curse of God are denounced against all sin as its
just desert. (4.) This doctrine, therefore, necessarily tends not only
§2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 137
to lessen our sense of the evil or pollution of sin, but also to
destroy the sense of guilt. Our sins are our misfortunes, our in-
firmities. They are not what conscience pronounces them to be,
crimes calling for condign punishment. Sin, however, reveals
itself in our consciousness not as a weakness, but as a power. It
is o;i'eatest in the strongest. It is not the feeble-minded who are
the worst of men ; but those great in intellect have been, in many
cases, the greatest in iniquity. Satan, the worst of created beings,
is the most powerful of creatures. (5.) If this theory be correct, sin
must be everlasting. As we can never be free from the limitations
of our being, we can never be free from sin to which those limita-
tions unavoidably give rise. The soul, therefore, as has been said,
is the asymptote of God, forever approaching but never reaching
the state of absolute sinlessness.
Sin necessary Antagonism.
Still another theory obviously inconsistent with the facts of con-
sciousness and the teachings of the Bible, is that which accounts
for sin on the law of necessary opposition, or antagonism. All life,
it is said, implies action and reaction. Even in the material uni-
verse the same law prevails. The heavenly bodies are kept in
their orbits by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces.
There is polarity in light, and in magnetism and electricity. All
chemical changes are produced by attraction and repulsion. Thus
in the animal world there is no strength without obstacles to be
overcome ; no rest witliout fatigue ; no life without death. So also
the mind is developed by continual struggles, by constant conflict
with what is within and without. The same law, it is urged, must
prevail in the moral world. There can be no good without evil.
Good is the resistance or the overcoming of evil. What the ma-
terial universe would be, had matter but one property ; if every-
thing were oxygen or everything carbon ; what life would be with-
out action and reaction ; what the mind would be without the
struggle with error and search after truth ; such, it is said, the
moral world would be without sin ; a stagnant, lifeless pool. So
far as creatures are concerned, it is maintained, that it is a law of
their constitution, that they should be developed by antagonism, by
the action of contrary forces, or opposing principles ; so that a
moral world without sin is an impossibility. Sin is the necessary
condition of the existence of virtue.
This general theory is of early origin and wide dissemination.
In its latest form, as presented by Blasche and Rosenkranz, the uni-
138 PART n. Ch. vul — sin.
verse itself, as a product of the self-development of the infinite and
absolute Being, involving a separation or difference from the pure
and simple one in which was no distinction, is evil. It comes into
existence bv a fall or apostasy. Thus, as Professor Miiller in his
work on " Sin," says, Instead of Pantiieism we have a system
which nearly approaches Pansatanism. Apart however from this
dreadful extreme of the doctrine, in any form it destroys the very
nature of sin. What is so called is the universal law of all finite
existence. There cannot be action without reaction. There can-
not be life without diversity and antagonism of operations. And
if good cannot exist without eA'il, evil ceases to be something to be
abhorred and condemned. Men cease to be responsible for what
is inseparable from their very nature as creatures, and therefore
there is nothing which the conscience can condemn or which God
can punish. Our whole moral nature, on this theory, is a delu-
sion, and all the denunciations of Scripture against sin are the rav-
ines of fanaticism.
tSchleiermacher s Theory of Sin.
Schleiermacher's doctrine of sin is so related to his whole philo-
sophical and theological system that one cannot be understood
without some knowledge of the other. His philosophy is pantheistic.
His theology is simply the interpretation of human consciousness in
accordance with the fundamental principles of his philosophy. It
is called Christian theology because it is the interpretation of the
religious consciousness of Christians ; i. e., of those who know and
believe the facts recorded concerning Christ. The leading princi-
ples of his system are the following : —
1. God is the absolute Infinity (die einfache und absolute
Unendlichkeit), not a person, but simple being with the single
attribute of omnipotence. Other attributes which we ascribe to
the Infinite Being express not what is in Him (or rather in It),
but the effects produced in us. Wisdom, goodness, holiness in God,
mean simply the causality in Him which produces those attributes
in us.
2. Absolute power means all power. God, or the absolutely
powerful being, is the only cause. Everything that is and every-
thing that occurs are due to his efficiency.
3. This infinite power produces the world. Whatever the
relation between the two, whether it is the substance of which the
world is the phenomenon, or Avhether the world is the substance of
which God is the life, the world in some sense is. There is a finite
as well as an infinite.
§ 2.] . PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 139
4. Man, as an integral part of the world, consists of two ele-
ments, or stands related both to the finite and infinite, God and
nature. There is in man self-consciousness, or a consciousness
which is affected by the world. He is in the world and of the
world, and is acted upon by the world. On the other hand, he has
wh:it Schleiermacher calls Gottesbewusstseyn, or God-consciousness.
Tliis is not merely a consciousness of God, but is God in us in the
form of consciousness.
5. The normal, or ideal, state of man consists in the absolute
and uninterrupted control of the God-consciousness, or of God in
us. These two principles he sometimes distinguishes as flesh and
spirit. But by flesh he does not mean the body ; nor what St.
Paul commonly means by it, our corrupt fallen nature ; but our
whole nature so far as it stands related to the world. It is tanta-
mount, in the terminology of Schleiermachei', to self-conscious-
ness. And by spirit he does not mean the reason, nor what the
Bible means by the spirit in man, {. e., the Holy Ghost, but the
(Gottesbewusstseyn) God-consciousness, or God in us.
6. Religion consists in the feeling of absolute dependence. That
is, in the recognition of the fact that God, or the absolute Being,
is the only cause, and that we are merely the form in which his
causality is revealed or exercised.
7. The original state of man was not a normal or ideal state.
That is, the God-consciousness or divine principle was not strong
enough absolutely to control the self-consciousness. That was a
state to be reached by progress or development.
8. The feeling which arises from the want of this absolute control
of the higher principle is the sense of sin ; and the conviction that
the higher principle ought to rule is the sense of guilt. With this
feeling of sin and guilt arises the sense of the need of redemption.
9. This redemption consists in giving to the God-consciousness
complete control ; and is effected through Christ, who is the normal
or ideal man. That is. He is the man in whom the God-conscious-
ness, the divine nature, God (these, in this system, are interchange-
able terms), was from the beginning completely dominant. We
become like Him, {. e., are redeemed, partly by the recognition of
his true character as sinless, and partly by communion with Him
through his Church.
It is plain that this system precludes the possibility of sin in the
true Scriptural sense of the term, —
1. Because it precludes the idea of a personal God. If sin be
want of conformity to law, there must be a lawgiver, one who
140 PART n. Ch. vin. — sm.
prescribes the rule of duty to his creatures. But in this system
there is no self-conscious, personal ruler who is the moral governor
of men.
2. Because the system denies all efficiency, and of course all
liberty to the creature. If the Infinite Being is the only agent,
then all that is, is due to his direct efficiency ; and sin, tiierefore,
is either his work or it is a mere negation.
3. Because what, according to this theory, is called sin is abso-
lutely universal and absolutely necessary. It is the unavoidable
consequence or condition of the existence of such a being as man.
That is, of a being with a self-consciousness and a God-conscious-
ness, in such proportions and relation that the dominance of the
latter can be attained only gradually.
4. Because what are called sin and guilt are only such in our
consciousness, or in our subjective apprehension of them. Certain
things produce in us the sense of pain, others the feeling of pleas-
ure ; some the feeling of approbation, others of disapprobation ;
and that by the ordinance, so to speak, of God. But pain and
pleasure, right and wrong, are merely subjective states. They
have no objective reality. We are sinful and guilty only in our
own feelings, not in the sight or judgment of God. ^ How entirely
this view of the subject destroys all true sense of sin ; how inconsist-
ent it is with all responsibility ; how it conflicts with the testimony
of our own consciousness and with the teachings of Scripture, must
be appai'ent to all who have not yielded themselves to the control
of the pantheistic principles on which this whole system is founded.
The Sensuous Theory.
A sixth theory places the source and seat of sin in the sensuous
nature of man. We are composed of body and spirit. Whatever
may be the relation of the two, tliey cannot fail to be recognized
as in some sense distinct elements of our nature. All attempts
to identify them not only lead to the contradiction of self-evident
truths, but to the degradation of the spiritual. If the mind be the
product of the body, or the highest function of matter, or if the
body be the product of the mind, or the external form in which
mind exists, in either way tiie mind is materialized. "It is," says
Miiller,^ "the undeniable teaciiing of history that the obliterating
the distinction between s[)irit and nature always ends in natural-
1 Schleiermacher's Glau')enslehre. Dr. Gess's Uebersicht uber das theologische System
Schleiermacliers. Miiller's Lehre Vo7i der Sdntfe, vol. i. pp. 412-437. Bretschneider's -Dog.
mnlik, pp. 14-38 of .Appendix to vol. i. Morell's Philosophy of Religion.
2 Vol. i. p. 363.
§ 2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 141
izing spirit, and never in spiritualizing nature." It is a fact of
consciousness and of common consent that man consists of soul and
body. It is no less certain that by the body he is connected with
the external world or nature, and by the soul with the spiritual
world and God ; that he has wants, desires, appetites, and affec-
tions, which find their objects in the material world, and that he
has other instincts, affections, and powers which find their objects
in the spiritual world. It is self-evident that the latter are higher
and ought to be uniformly and always dominant ; it is a fact of expe-
rience that the reverse is the case ; that the lower prevail over the
higher ; that men are universally to a greater or less extent, and
always to an extent that is degrading and sinful, governed by their
sensuous nature. They prefer the seen and temporal to the unseen
and eternal. They seek the gratification which is to be found in
material objects, rather than the blessedness which is to be found
in the things of the Spirit. Herein, according to this theory,
consists the source and essence of sin. Tliis doctrine, which has
prevailed in every age of the Church, has existed in different
forms, (1.) In that of the Manichaean system, which teaches the
essential evil of matter. (2.) In that of the later Romanism, which
teaches that man as originally created was so constituted that the
soul was subject to the body, his higher powers being subordinate
to his lower or sensuous nature. This original evil in his constitution
was, in the case of Adam, according to the Romanists, corrected by
the supernatural gift of original righteousness. Wiien that righte-
ousness was lost by the fall, the sensuous element in man's nature
became ascendent. Therein consists his habitual sinfulness, and
this is the source of all actual transgressions. (3.) The more
common form of this theory is essentially the same with the Romish
doctrine, except that it does not refer the predominance of the body
over tlie soul to the loss of original righteousness. The fact that
men are governed by the lower rather than by the higher ele-
ments of their nature, as a matter of experience, is accounted for in
different ways. (1.) Some say it arises from the relative weakness
of the higher powers. This amounts to the Leibnitzian doctrine
that sin is due to the limitations of our nature, or the feebleness
and liability to error belonging to our constitution as creatures.
(2.) Others appeal to the liberty of the will. Man as a free agent
has the power either to resist or to submit to the enticements of
the flesh. If he submits, it is his own fault and sin. There is no
necessity and no coercion in the case. But if this submission is
universal imd uniform it must have a universal and adequate cause.
142 PART n. ch. vm. — sin.
That cause is not found in tlie mere liberty of man, or in his abihty to
submit. It must be that the cause is uniform and abiding, and such
a cause can only be found in the very constitution of man, at least
in his present state, which renders the sensuous element in man
more powerful than the spiritual. (3.) Others again, while not
denying the plenary ability of man to resist the allurements of
sense, account for the universal ascendency of the lower powers by
a reference to the order of development of our nature. We are so
constituted, or we come into the world in such a state that the
lower or sensuous part of our nature invariably and of necessity
attains strength before the development of the higher powers. The
animal propensities of the child are strong, while reason and con-
science are weak. Hence the lower gain such an ascendency over
the higher that it is ever afterwards maintained.
It is obvious, however, that this theory in any of its forms fails
to bring out the real nature of sin, or satisfactorily to account for
its origin.
1. Sin is not essentially the state or act of a sensuous nature.
The creatures presented in Scripture as the most sinful are the
fallen spirits, who have no bodies and no sensual appetites.
2. In the second place, the sins which are the most offensive in
man, and which most degrade him, and most burden his conscience,
have nothing to do with the bod}^ Pride, malice, envy, ambition,
and, above all, unbelief and enmity to God, are spiritual sins. They
may not only exist in beings who have no material organization,
but in the soul when separated from the body, and when its sensuous
nature is extinct.
3. This theory tends to lower our sense of sin and guilt. All
moral evil becomes mere weakness, the yielding of the feebler
powers of the spirit to the stronger forces of the flesh. If sin
invariably, and by a law which controls men in their present state
of existence, arises from the very constitution of their nature as
sentient beings, then the responsibility for sin must be greatly
lessened, if not entirely destroyed.
4. If the body be the seat and source of sin, then whatever tends
to weaken the body or to reduce the force of its desires must render
men more pure and virtuous. If this be so then monkery and
asceticism have a foundation in truth. They are wisely adapted
to the elevation of the soul above the influence of the flesh and of
the world, and of all forms of evil. All experience, however,
pi'oves the reverse. Even when those who thus seclude themselves
from the world, and macerate the body, are sincere, and faithfully
§ 2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 143
adhere to their principles, the whole tendency of their discipline
is evil. It nourishes pride, self-righteousness, formality, and false
religion. The Pharisees, in the judgment of Christ, with all their
strictness of living and constant fasting, were further from the
kingdom of heaven than publicans and harlots.
5. On the assumption involved in this theory, the old should be
good. In them the lusts of the flesh become extinct. They lose
the power to enjoy what pleases the eyes or pampers the tastes of
the young. The world to them has lost its attractions. The body
becomes a burden. It is in the state to which the youthful ascetic
endeavours to reduce his corporeal frame by abstinence and aus-
terity ; and yet the older the man, unless renewed by the grace of
God, the worse the sinner. The soul is more dead, more insensible
to all that is elevating and spiritual, and more completely alienated
from God ; less grateful for his mercies, less afraid of his wrath,
and less affected by all the manifestations of his glory and love.
It is not the body, therefore, that is the cause of sin.
6. This theory is opposed to the doctrine of the Bible. The
Scriptures do indeed refer a large class of sins to the sensual nature
of man ; and they represent the flesh (or crdp^') as the seat of sin
and the source of all its manifestations in our present state. They
moreover, use the word a-apKLKo?, carnal, as synonymous with cor-
rupt or sinful. All this, however, does not prove that they teach
that man's animal or sensuous nature is the seat and source of his
sinfulness. All depends on the sense in which the sacred writers
use the words <rdp^ and aapKLKo? as antithetical to ■n-i'cvp.a and Trvev/xar-
iKos. According to one interpretation, a-dp^ means the body with
its animal life, its instincts and appetites. Or as Bretschneider
defines it : ^ " Natura visibilis sen animalis tanquam appetituum
naturalium fons et sedes, et quidem in malam partem, quatenus
haec natura animalis, legi divin^e non adstricta, appetit contra
legem, igiturque cupiditatum et peccatorum est mater." If such
be the meaning of a-dp^, then o-apKtKos means animal and ipvx'-KO'; sen-
suous. On the other hand, according to this view, irv^vjxa means
reason, and TrKcu/xartKo;, the reasonable, that is, one governed by the
reason. According to this view, the aapKiKot are those who are
controlled by their senses and animal nature ; and the -n-vevp-uTLKOL,
those who are governed by their reason and higher powers. Ac-
cording to the other interpretation of these terms, a-dp^ means
the fallen nature of man, his nature as it now is ; and -n-ievp-a the
Holy Ghost. Tlien the aapKiKoi are the unrenewed or natural men,
1 Lexicon in Novum Testamentum, sub voce.
144 PART n. Ch. VIII. — sin.
i. e., tliose destitute of the grace of God, and the Trvtv/xaTLKoi, are
those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. It is of course admitted
that the word (rdpi is often used in Scripture and especially in St.
Paul's writings, for the body ; then for what is external and ritual;
then for what is perishing. Mankind when designated as flesh are
presented as earthly, feeble, and transient. Besides these common
and admitted meanings of the word, it is also used in a moral sense.
It designates man, or humanity, or human nature as apostate from
God. The works of the flesh, therefore, are not merely sensual
works, but sinful works, everything in man that is evil. Everything
that is a manifestation of his nature as fallen, is included under the
works of the flesh. Hence to this class are referred envy, malice,
pride, and contentions ; as well as rioting and drunkenness, Gal.
v. 19-21. To walk after the flesh ; to be carnally minded; to be
in the flesh, etc., etc. (see Rom. viii. 1-13), are all Scriptural modes
of expressing the state, conduct, and life of the men of the world of
every class. The meaning o^ flesh, however, as used in Paul's writ-
ings, is most clearly determined by its antithesis to Spirit. That
the TTicu/ta of which he speaks is the Holy Spirit, is abundantly
clear. He calls it the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, the
Spirit which is to quicken our mortal bodies ; which witnesses with
our spirits that we are the children of God ; whose dwelling in be-
lievers makes them the temple of God. The irvevfiaTLKoi, or spirit-
ual, are those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells as the controlling
principle of their lives. The Scriptures, therefore, are directly op-
posed to the theory which makes the body or the sensuous nature of
man the source of sin, and its essence to consist in yielding to our
appetites and worldly affections, instead of obeying the reason and
conscience.
The Theory that all Sin consists in Selfishness,
There is another doctrine of the nature of sin which belongs to
the philosophical, rather than to the theological theories on the sub-
ject. It makes all sin to consist in selfishness. Selfishness is not
to be confounded with self-love. The latter is a natural and orig-
inal principle of our natux'e and of the nature of all sentient crea-
tures, whether rational or irrational. Belonging to their original
constitution, and necessary to their preservation and well-being, it
cannot be sinful. It is simply the desire of happiness which is
inseparable from the nature of a sentient being. Selfishness, there-
fore, is not mere self-love, but the undue preference of our own
happiness to the happiness or welfare of others. According to
I
§2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 14.";
some, tliis preference is of the nature of a desire or feeling ; ac-
cording to others, it is of the nature of a purpose. In tlie latter
view, all sin consists in the purpose to seek our own happiness
rather than the general good, or happiness, as it is commonly
expressed,' of the universe. In either view, sin is the undue
preference of ourselves.
This theory is founded on the following principles, or is an es-
sential element in the following system of doctrine : (1.) Happi-
ness is the greatest good. Whatever tends to promote the great-
est amount of happiness is for that reason good, and whatever
has the opposite tendency is evil. (2.) As happiness is the only
and ultimate good, benevolence, or the disposition or purpose to pro-
mote happiness, must be the essence and sum of virtue. (3.) As
God is infinite, He must be infinitely benevolent, and therefore it
must be his desire and purpose to produce the greatest possible
amount of happiness. (4.) The universe being the work of God
must be designed and adapted to secure that end, and is therefore
the best possible world or system of things. (5.) As sin exists in
the actual world, it must be the necessary means of the greatest
good, and therefore it is consistent, as some say, with the holiness
of God to permit and ordain its existence ; or, as others say, to cre-
ate it. (6.) There is no more sin in the world than is necessary
to secure the greatest happiness of the universe.
The first and most obvious objection to this whole theory has
already been presented, namely, that it destroys the very idea of
moral good. It confounds the right with the expedient. It thus
contradicts the consciousness and intuitive judgments of the mind.
It is intuitively true that the right is right in its own nature, inde-
pendently of its tendency to promote happiness. To make holiness
only a means to an end ; to exalt enjoyment above moral excellence,
is not only a perversion and a degradation of the higher to the lower,
but it is the utter destruction of the principle. This is a matter
which, properly speaking, does not admit of proof. Axioms can-
not be proved. They can only be affirmed. Should a man deny
that sweet and bitter differ, it would be impossible to prove that
there is a difference between them. We can only appeal to our
own consciousness and aflSrm that we perceive the difference. And
we can appeal to the testimony of all other men, who also affirm
the same thing. But after all this is only an assertion of a fact
first by the individual, and then by the mass of mankind. In like
manner if any man says that there is no difference between the
good and the expedient, that a thing is good simply because it is
VOL. II. 10
146 PART n. Ch. vin. — sin.
expedient ; or, if he should sa_y that tliere is no difference between
holiness and sin, we can only refer to our own consciousness
and to the common consciousness of men, as contradictino; his as-
sertioji. We know, therefore, from the very constitution of our
nature that the right and the expedient are not identical ideas ;
that the difference is essential and immutable. And we know
from the same source, and with equal assurance or certainty, that
happiness is not the highest good ; but on the contrary, that holi-
ness is as much higher than happiness, as heaven is higher than
the earth, or Christ than Epicurus. (2.) This theory is as much
opposed to our religious, as it is to our moral nature. Our depend-
ence is upon God ; our allegiance is to Him ; we are bound to
do His will irrespective of all consequences ; and we are exalted
and purified just in proportion as we are lost in Him, adoring his
divine perfections, seeking to promote his glory, and recognizing
that in fact and of right all things are by Him, through Him, and
for Him. According to this theory, however, our allegiance is to
the universe of sentient beings. We are bound to promote their
happiness. This is our highest and our only obligation. There can
therefore be no religion in the proper sense of the word. Religion
is the homage and allegiance of the soul to an infinitely perfect per-
sonal Being, to whom we owe our existence, who is the source of
all good, and for whom all things consist. To substitute the uni-
verse for this Being, and to resolve all duty into the obligation to
promote the happiness of the universe, is really to render all re-
ligion impossible. The universe is not our God. It is not the uni-
verse that we love ; it is not the universe that we adore ; it is not
the universe that we fear. It is not the favour of the universe that
is our life, nor is its disapprobation our death. (3.) As this theory
is thus opposed to our moral and religious nature, it is evil in its
practical effects. It is a proverb, a maxim founded on the nature
of things and on universal experience, that the world is governed
by ideas. It is doubtful whether history furnishes any more strik-
ing illustration of the truth of this maxim than that furnisiied bj
the operation of the theory that all virtue is founded in expediency ;
that holiness is that which tends to produce happiness. When the
individual man adopts that principle, his whole inward and outward
life is determined by it. Every question which comes up for de-
cision, is answered, not by a reference to the law of God, or to the
instincts of his moral nature, but by the calculations of expediency.
And when a people come under the control of this theory they in-
variably and of necessity become calculating. If happiness be the
§2.] PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES. 147
greatest good, and whatever seems to us adapted to promote hap-
piness is right, then God and tlie moral law are lost sight of. Our
own happiness is apt to become the chief good for us, as it is for the
universe. (4.) It need hardly be remarked that we are incompe-
tent to determine what course of conduct will issue in the greatest
amount of physical good, and therefore can never tell what is right
and what is wrong. It may be said that we are not left to our own
sagacity to decide that question. The law of God as revealed in
his word, is a divine rule by which we can learn what tends to hap-
piness and what to misery. But this not only degrades the moral
law into a series of wise maxims, but it changes the motive of obe-
dience. We obey not out of regard to the authority of God, but
because He knows better than we what will promote the greatest
good. Besides this, in the questions which daily present them-
selves for decision, we are fcM-ced to judge for ourselves what is
right and wrong, in the light of conscience and of the general prin-
ciples contained in the Scriptures. And if tiiese principles all re-
solve themselves into the one maxim, that that is right which pro-
motes happiness, we are obh'ged to resort to the calculations of
expediency, for which in our short-sighted wisdom we are utterly
incompetent. (5.) Besides all this, the theory assumes that sin,
and the present awful amount of sin, are the necessary means of
the greatest good. What then becomes of the distinction between
good and evil? If that is good which tends to promote the great-
est happiness, and if sin is necessary to secure the greatest happi-
ness, then sin ceases to be sin, and becomes a good. Then also
it must be right to do evil that good may come. How, asks the
Apostle, on this principle, can God judge the world ? If the sins of
men not only in fact promote the higiiest end, but if a man in sin-
ning has the purpose and desire to cooperate with God in producing
^the greatest amount of happiness, how can he be condemned ? If
virtue or holiness is right simply because it tends to produce the
greatest happiness, and if sin also tends to the same result, then
L the man who sins with a view to the greatest good is just as virtu-
Bt ous as the man who practices holiness with the same end in view.
^B It may be said that it is a contradiction to say that a man sins with
^H a truly benevolent purpose ; for the essence of virtue is to purpose
^H the greatest good, and therefore whatever is done in the execution
^^m of that purpose, is virtuous. Exactly so. The objection itself
^V shows that right becomes wrong and wrong right, according to the
^H design with which it is committed or performed. And therefore,
^H if a man lies, steals, or murders with a design to promote the
I
148 PART n. Ch. vui. — sin.
good of society, of the church, or of the universe, he is a virtuous
man. It was principally for tlie adoption of, and the carrying into
practice this doctrine, tliat the Jesuits became an abomination
in the sight of Cliristendom and were banished from all civilized
countries. Jesuits were however, unhappily not its only advocates.
The principle has been widely disseminated in books on morals,
and has been adopted by theologians as the foundation of their
whole system of Christian doctrine. (6.) If happiness be not the
highest good, then benevolence is not the sum of all excellence, and
selfishness as the opposite of benevolence, cannot be the essence of
sin. On this point, again, appeal may be safely made to our own
consciousness and to the common consciousness of men. Our moral
nature teaches us, on the one hand, that all virtue cannot be re-
solved into benevolence : justice, fidelity, humility, forbearance, pa-
tience, constancy, spiritual mindedness, the love of God, gratitude to
Christ, and zeal for his glory, do not reveal themselves in conscious-
ness as forms of benevolence. They are as distinct to the moral
sense, as red, blue, and green are distinct to the eye. On the other
hand, unbelief, hardness of heart, ingratitude, impenitence, malice,
and enmity towards God, are not modifications of selfishness. These
attempts at simplification are not only unphilosophical, but also dan-
gerous ; as they lead to confounding things which differ, and, as we
have seen, to denying the essential nature of moral distinctions.
The doctrine which makes all sin to consist in selfishness, as it has
been generally held, especially in this country, considers selfishness
as the opposite of benevolence agreeably to the theory Avhich has just
been considered. There are others, however, that mean by it the
opposite to the love of God. As God is the proper centre of the
soul and the sum of all perfection, apostasy from Him is the essence
of sin ; apostasy from God involves, it is said, a foiling back into
ourselves, and making self the centre of our being. Thus Miiller,*
Tholuck,^ and many others, make alienation from God the primary
principle of sin. But dethroning God necessitates the putting an
idol in his place. That idol, Augustine and after him numerous
writers of different schools, say, is the creature. As the Apostle
concisely describes the wickedness of men, by saying, that they
" worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator."
But Miiller argues that as it is self the sinner seeks in the creature,
the real principle of sin consists in putting self in the place of God,
and in making it the highest end of life and its gratification or
1 Lehre von der Siinde, toI i. pp. 134-158.
2 Von der Siinde und vom Versohnei; p. 32.
§3.] DOCTRINE OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 149
satisfaction the great object of pursuit. It of course is not denied,
that selfishness, in some of its forms, inckides a kxrge class of
the sins of which men are guilty. What is objected to is, the
making selfishness the essence of all sin, or the attempt to reduce
all the manifestations of moral evil to this one principle. This
cannot be done. There is disinterested sin as well as disinterested
benevolence. A man may as truly and as deliberately sacrifice
himself in sinning, as in doing good. Many parents have violated
the law of God not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of
their children. It may be said that this is only a form of selfish-
ness, because the happiness of their children is their happiness,
and the sin is committed for the gratification of their parental feel-
ings. To this, however, it may be answered, first, that it is con-
tradictory to say that what is done for another is done for ourselves.
When a mother sacrifices wealth and life for her child, although
she acts under the impulse of the maternal instinct, she acts dis-
intei'estedly. The sacrifice consists in preferring her child to her-
self. In the second place, if an act ceases to be virtuous when its
performance meets and satisfies some demand of our nature, then
no act can be virtuous. When a man does any good work, he
satisfies his conscience. If he does an act of kindness to the poor,
if he devotes himself to the relief of the sick or the prisoner, he
gratifies his benevolent feelings. If he seeks the favour and fel-
lowship of God, and consecrates himself to his service, he gratifies
the noblest principles of his nature, and experiences the highest
enjoyment of which he is susceptible. It is not necessary there-
fore, in order that an act, wdiether right or wrong, should be dis-
interested, that it should not minister to our gratification. All
depends on the motive for which it is done. If that motive be the
happiness of another and not our own, the act is disinterested. It
is contrary, therefore, to the testimony of every man's conscious-
ness to say that selfishness is the essential element of sin. There
is no selfishness in malice, nor in enmity to God. These are far
highei; forms of evil than mere selfishness. Tiie true nature of
sin is alienation from God and opposition to his character and will.
It is the opposite of holiness and does not admit of being reduced
to any one principle, either the love of the creature or the love of
self.
§ 3. The Doctrine of the Early Church.
The theories already considered are called philosophical, either
because they concern the metaphysical nature of sin, or because
150 PART II. ch. vin. — sin.
they are founded on some philosophical principle. The moral or
theological doctrines on the subject are so designated because they
are founded on what are assumed to be the teachings of our moral
nature or of the word of God. So far as tiie early Church is con-
cerned, the docti'ine respecting sin was stated only in general terms.
In almost all cases the explicit and discriminating doctrinal affirma-
tions receiyed their form as counter statements to erroneous views.
So long as the truth was not denied the Church was content to
hold and state it in the simple form in which it is presented in the
Bible. But when positions were assumed which were inconsistent
with the revealed doctrine, or when one truth was so stated as to
contradict some other truth, it became necessary to be more ex-
plicit, and to frame such an expression of the doctrine as should
comprehend all that God had revealed on the subject. This process
in the determination, or rather in the definition of doctrines was of
necessity a gradual one. It was only as one error after another
arose in the Church, that the truth came to be distinguished from
them severally by more explicit and guarded statements. As the
earliest heresies were those of Gnosticism and Manicheism in which,
in different forms, sin was represented as a necessary evil having
its origin in a cause independent of God and beyond the control of
the creature, the Church was called upon to deny those errors, and
to assert that sin was neither necessary nor eternal, but had its
origin in the free will of rational creatures. In the struggle with
Manicheism the whole tendency of the Church was to exalt the
liberty and ability of man, in order to maintain the essential doc-
trine, then so variously assailed, that sin is a moral evil for which
man is to be condemned, and not a calamity for which he is to be
pitied. It was the unavoidable consequence of the unsettled state
of doctrinal formulas, that conflicting statements should be made
even by those who meant to be the advocates of the truth, — not
only different writers, but the samo writer, would on different occa-
sions, present inconsistent statements. In the midst of these in-
consistencies the following points were constantly insisted uj)on.
(1.) That all men in their present state are sinners. (2.) That
this universal sinfulness of men had its historical and causal origin
in the voluntary apostasy of Adam. (3.) That such is the present
state of human nature that salvation can be attained in no other
way than through Christ, and by the assistance of his Spirit.
(4.) That even infants as soon as born need regeneration and
redemption, and can be saved only through the merit of Christ.
These great truths, which lie at the foundation of the gospel, en-
§3.] DOCTRINE OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 151
tered into the general faith of the Church before they were so stren-
uously asserted by Augustine in his controversy with Pelagius.
It is true that many assertions may be quoted from the Greek
fathers inconsistent with some of the propositions above stated.
But the same writers in other passages avow their faitli in these
primary Scriptural truths ; and they are implied in the prayers and
ordinances of the Church, and were incorporated at a later period,
in the public confessions of the Greeks, as well as of the Latins.
Clemens Alexandrinus^ says: to yap efa/xapraveiv ttSo-iv t/xcfiVTov Koi kol-
v6v. Justin says,^ To ycVos rwr avdpwTTwv dirb tov *A5a/x viro Odvarov koX
irXdv-qv ttjv tov 6(f)€0)<s CTrcTrrcoKet, although he adds, Trapa Tr]v iSiav alriav
cKda-Tov avTwv TTovrjpevo-aixivov. Origen says, ^ " Si Levi .... in lura-
bis Abrahse fuisse perhibetur, multo magis onines homines qui in
hoc mundo nascuntur et nati sunt, in lumbis erant Adas, cum adhuc
esset in Paradiso ; et omnes homines cum ipso vel in ipso expulsi
sunt de Paradiso." Athanasius says,* Havrcs ovu ol i^ ASa/x yevo/j.-
evoL iv dfiapTLafi crvWap-jidvovTai ttj tov Trpoira.Topo<i KaraSiKr] — dUKvvaiv cos
£t apX^^ V d.vp9p<ji>Tr(i)V (jivtri'; vtto ttjv afiapriav TriirTUiKey vrrb t7J<; iv Em irapa
ySao-cws, Koi VTTO Kardpav rj yevvrja-Ls yeyovev. Ambrose says,^ *' Manifes-
tum itaque in Adam omnes peccasse quasi in massa : ipse enim per
peccatum corruptus, quos genuit omnes nati sunt sub peccato. Ex
eo igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex ipso sumus omnes." Cyprian
says : ^ " Si . . . . baptismo atque a gratia nemo prohibetur ;
quanto magis prohiberi non debet infans, qui recens natus niliil pec-
cavit, nisi quod secundum Adam carnaliter natus, contagium mortis
antiquas prima nativitate contraxit? qui ad remissam peccatorum
accipiendam hoc ipso facilius accedit, quod illi remittuntur non
propria, sed aliena peccata," Again he says : " Fuerant et ante
Christum viri insignes, sed in peccatis concepti et nati, nee originali
nee personali caruere delicto." These writers, says Gieseler,"
taught that through Christ and his obedience on the tree was
healed the original disobedience of man in reference to the tree of
knowledge ; that as we offended God in the first Adam by trans-
gression, so through the second Adam we are reconciled to God ;
that Christ has freed us from the power of the devil to which we
were subjected by the sin of Adam ; that Christ has regained for
1 Pcedagogus, ill. 12; Works, edit. Paris 1641, p. 262, c.
2 Dialogus cum Tryphone JucIcbo, 88; Works, edit. Cologne, 1636, p. 316, a.
8 In Epistolam ad Romanos, lib. v. sect. 1; Woi-ks, edit. Wirceburgi, 1791, vol. xv. p. 218.
* Expos, in Psalmos ; in Ps. 1. (li.), 7.
6 In Epistolam ad Romanos, v. 12: Works, Paris, 1661, vol. iii. p. 269, a.
6 EpistolaWw. edit. Bremen, 1690; p. 161, of third set.
T Kirchengeschichie, edit. Bonn, 1855, rol. vi. p. 180.
152 PART 11. Ch. VIII. — Sm.
us life and immortality.^ It is not maintained that the Greek
fathers held the doctrine of original sin in the form in which it was
afterwards developed by Augustine, but they nevertheless taught
that the race fell in Adam, that they all need redemption, and that
redemption can only be obtained through the Lord Jesus Christ.^
§ 4. Pelagian Theory.
In the early part of the fifth century, Pelaglus, Coelestius, and
Julian, introduced a new theory as to the nature of sin and the
state of man since the fall, and of our relation to Adam. That
their doctrine was an innovation is proved by the fact that it was
universally rejected and condemned as soon as it was fully under-
stood. They were all men of culture, ability, and exemplary
character. Pelagius was a Briton, whether a native of Brittany or
of what is now called Great Britain, is a matter of doubt. He was
by profession a monk, although a layman. Coelestius was a teacher
and jurist ; Julian an Italian bishop. The radical principle of the
Pelagian theory is, that ability limits obligation. " If I ought, I
can," is the aphorism on which the whole system rests. Augus-
tine's celebrated prayer, " Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis," was
pronounced by Pelagius an absurdity, because it assumed that God
can demand more than man render, and what man must receive as
a gift. In opposition to this assumption he laid down the principle
that man must have plenary ability to do and to be whatever can
be righteously required of him. " Iterum quserendum est, pecca-
tum voluntatis an necessitatis est ? Si necessitatis est, peccatum
non est ; si voluntatis, vitari potest. Iterum quserendum est,
utrumne debeat homo sine peccato esse ? Procul dubio debet. Si
debet potest ; si non potest, ergo non debet. Et si non debet homo
esse sine peccato, debet ergo cum peccato esse, et jam peccatum
non erit, si illud deberi constiterit." ^
1 Irenjeus, V. xvi. 3; TForits, edit. Leipzig, 1853; vol. i. p. 762. " Obediens facttis est
usque ad mortem, moi-tem auiem crucis,F\u\.u. 8; earn qu* in ligno facta fuerat inobedi-
entiam, per earn qiipe in ligno fuerat obedientiam sanans .... In primo quidem
Adam offendimus, non facientes ejus prasceptum; in secundo autem Adam reconciliati
sumus, obedientes usque ad mortem facti." And again, Ibid. v. xxiii. 1, p. 546 : " Quo-
niam Deus invictus et magnanimis est, magnanimem quidem se exbibuit ad correptionem
hominis, et probationem omnium, .... ; per secundum autem hominem alligavit
fortem et diripuit ejus vasa et evacuavit mortem, vivificans eum hominem, qui fuerit morti-
ticatus."
2 J. G Walch : De Pelagianismo ante Pelagium. J. Hern : De Sententiis eorum Patrwn
quorum aucloriias ante Auguslinum plurimmn valuif. Neander's Church History, vol. i.
Gieseler's Kirchenffeschichte, vol. vi. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine. Also Miin-
scher's, Meyer's, and Klee's Dogmenyeschichte.
8 Gieseler, vol. i.
§4.] PELAGIAN THEORY. 153
The intimate conviction that men can be responsible for nothing
which is not in their power, led, in the first place, to the Pelagian
doctrine of the freedom of the will. It was not enough to consti-
tute free agency that the agent should be self-determined, or that
all his volitions should be determined by his own inward states. It
was required that he should have power over those states. Lib-
erty of the will, according to the Pelagians, is plenary power, at all
times and at every moment, of choosing between good and evil, and
of being either holy or unholy. Whatever does not thus fall within
the imperative power of the will can have no moral character.
" Omne bonum ac malum, quo vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles
sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis : capaces enim utri-
usque rei, non pleni nascimur, et ut sine virtute, ita et sine vitio
procreamur : atque ante actionem propriae voluntatis, id solum in
homine est, quod Deus condidit."^ Again, " Volens namque Deus
rationabilem creaturam voluntarii boni munere et liberi arbitrii
potestate donare, utriusque partis possibilitatem honiini inserendo
proprium ejus fecit, esse quod velit ; ut boni ac mali capax, natural-
iter utrumque posset, et ad alterumque voluntatem deflecteret."
2. Sin, therefore, consists only in the deliberate choice of evil.
It presupposes knowledge of what is evil, as well as the full power
of choosing or rejecting it. Of course it follows, —
3. That there can be no such thino; as orio-inal sin, or inherent
hereditary corruption. Men are born, as stated in the foregoing
quotation, ut sine virtute^ ita sine vitio. In other words men are
born into the world since the fall in the same state in which Adam
was created. Julian says:^ "Nihil est peccati in homine, si nihil est
proprise voluntatis, vel assensionis. Tu autem concedis nihil fuisse
in parvulis propriae voluntatis : non ego, sed ratio concludit ; nihil
igitur in eis esse peccati." This was the point on which the Pela-
gians principally insisted, that it was contrary to the nature of sin
that it should be transmitted or mherited. If nature was sinful,
then God as the author of nature must be the author of sin. Ju-
lian ^ therefore says : " Nemo naturaliter mains est ; sed quicunque
reus est, moribns, non exordiis accusatur."
4. Consequently Adam's sin injured only himself. This was one
of the formal charges presented against the Pelagians in the Svnod
of Diospolis. Pelagius endeavored to answer it, by saying that the
sin of Adam exerted the influence of a bad example, and in that
1 Ve\Ag\\x%,ApudAugtistinumdePtccatoOriginali,li\ PTor/rs, edit. Benedictines, vol. x. p.
573, a, b.
2 Aptid August inum Opus Imperfectum contra Julianuin, i. 60; Tl'or^-s, vol. x. p. 1511, d.
3 J/jiJ.
154 PART n. Ch. Vm. — SIN".
sense, and to that degree, Injured his posterity. But he denied
that there is any causal relation between the sin of Adam and the
sinfulness of his race, or that death is a penal evil. Adam would
have died from the constitution of his nature, whether he had
sinned or not ; and his posterity, whether infant or adult, die from
like necessity of nature. As Adam was in no sense the repre-
sentative of his race, as they did not stand their probation in him,
each man stands a probation for himself; and is justified or con-
demned solely on the ground of his own individual personal acts.
5. As men come into the world without the contamination of
original sin, and as they have plenary power to do all that God
requires, they may, and in many cases do, live without sin ; or if
at any time they transgress, they may turn unto God and perfectly
obey all his commandments. Hence Pelagius taught that some
men had no need for themselves to repeat the petition in the Lord's
prayer, " Forgive us our trespasses." Before the Synod of Car-
thage one of the grounds on which he was charged with heresy
was, that he taught, " et ante adventum Domini fuerunt homines
impeccabiles, id est, sine peccato."
6. Another consequence of his principles which Pelagius iina-
voidably drew was that men could be saved without the gospel.
As free will in the sense of plenary ability, belongs essentially to
man as much as reason, men whether Heathen, Jews, or Christians^
may fully obey the law of God and attain eternal life. The only
difference is that under the light of the Gospel, this perfect obe-
dience is rendered more easy. One of his doctrines, tlierefore, was
that " lex sic mittit ad regnum coelorum, quomodo et evange-
lium."
7. The Pelagian system denies the necessity of grace in the
sense of the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit. As the
Scriptures, however, speak so fully and constantly of the grace of
God as manifested and exercised in the salvation of men, Pelagius
could not avoid acknowledging that fact. By grace, however, he
understood everything which we derive from the goodness of God.
Our natural faculties of reason and free will, the revelation of the
truth whether in his works or his word, all the providential bless-
ings and advantages which men enjoy, flxll under the Pelagian idea
of grace. Augustine says, Pelagius represented grace to be the
natural endowments of men, which inasmuch as they are the gift
of God are grace. " Ille (Pelagius) Dei gratiam non appellat nisi'
naturam, qua libero arbitrio conditi sumus." ^ And Julian, he
1 Epistnla clxxix. 3; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. ii. pp. 9-11, d, 942, a.
I
§4.] PELAGIAN THEORY. 155
says, includes under the term all the gifts of God. " Ipsi gratiae,
beneficioruin quae nobis prsestare non desinit, augmenta reputa-
mus." ^
8. As infants ax'e destitute of moral character, baptism in their
case cannot either symbolize or effect the remission of sin. It is,
according to Pelagius, only a sign of their consecration to God.
He believed that none but the baptized were at death admitted into
the kingdom of heaven, in the Christian sense of that term, but held
that unbaptized infants were nevertheless partakers of eternal life.
By that term was meant what was afterwards called by the school-
men, limhus infantum. This was described as that fte'o-os tottos
KoAacrew? Kat TrapaSuauv, €ts ov kol to. d/3a7rri(rra f3pe<j)r] /xerart^c'/xcva tyv
IxaKafHuis.^ Pelagius and his doctrines were condemned by a coun-
cil at Carthage, A. D. 412. He was exonerated at the Synods of
Jerusalem and Diospolis, in 415 ; but condemned a second time in
a synod of sixty bishops at Carthage in 416. Zosimus, bishop of
Rome, at first sided with the Pelagians and censured the action of
the African bishops : but when their decision was confirmed by the
general council of Carthage in 418, at which two hundred bishops
were present, he joined in the condemnation and declared Pelagius
and his friends excommunicated. In 431 the Eastern Church
joined in this condemnation of the Pelagians, in the General Synod
held at Ephesus.^
Arguments against the Pelagian Doctrine.
The objections to the Pelagian views of the nature of sin will
of necessity come under consideration, when the Scriptural and
Protestant doctrine comes to be presented. It is sufficient for the
present to state, —
1. That the fundamental principle on which the whole system is
founded contradicts the common consciousness of men. It is not
true, as our own conscience teaches us, that our obligation is limited
by our ability. Every man knows that he is bound to be better
than he is, and better than he can make himself by any exertion
of his will. We are bound to love God perfectly, but we know
that such perfect love is beyond our power. We recognize the
obligation to be free from all sin, and absolutely conformed to the
1 Opus Imperfecfum contra Juliannm, i. 94; Woi-ks, vol. x. p. 1548, b.
'■' On tlift distinction between vUa ceterna and regnum ccelorum see Pelagius Apvd Augudi-
num de Peccalorum Merilis et Remissione, i. 58; Works, vol. x. p. 231. Cone. Carth. 418.
^ WisRer's Augustinism and Pelaginnism. Guericke's Church History, §§ 91-93. Ritter's
Geschickle der Christlichen Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 337-443; and all the church histories
and histories of doctrine.
156 PART II. ch. vin. — sin.
perfect law of God. Yet no man is so infatuated or so blinded to
his real character as really to believe that he either is thus perfect,
or has the power to make himself so. It is the daily and hourly
prayer or aspiration of every saint and of every sinner to be deliv-
ered from the bondage of evil. The proud and malignant would
gladly be humble and benevolent ; the covetous would rejoice to
be liberal ; the infidel longs for faith, and the hardened sinner for
repentance. Sin is in its own nature a burden and a torment, and
although loved and cherished, as the cups of the drunkard are cher-
ished, yet, if emancipation could be effected by an act of the will, sin
would cease to reign in any rational creature. There is no truth,
therefore, of whicii men are more intimately convinced than that
they are the slaves of sin ; that they cannot do the good they
Avould ; and that they cannot alter their character at wilh There
is no principle, therefore, more at variance with the common con-
sciousness of men than the fundamental principle of Pelagianism
that our ability limits our obligation, that we are not bound to be
better than we can make ourselves by a volition.
2. It is no less revolting to the moral nature of man to assert,
as Pelagianism teaches, that nothing is sinful but the deliberate
transgression of known law ; that there is no moral character in
feelings and emotions ; that love and hatred, malice and benevolence,
considered as affections of the mind, are alike indifferent ; that the
command to love God is an absurdity, because love is not under the
control of the will. All our moral judgments must be perverted
before we can assent to a system involving such consequences.
3. In the third place, the Pelagian doctrine, whicli confounds
freedom with ability, or which makes the liberty of a free agent to
consist in the power to determine his character by a volition, is
contrary to every man's consciousness. We feel, and cannot but
acknowledge, that we are free when we are self-determined ; while
at the same time we are conscious that the controlling states of
the mind are not under the power of the will, or, in other words,
are not under our own power. A theory which is founded on
identifying things which are essentially different, as liberty and
ability, must be false.
4. The Pelagian system leaves the universal sinfulness of men, a
fact which cannot be denied, altogether unaccounted for. To refer
it to the mere free agency of man is to say that a thing always is,
simply because it may be.
5. This system fails to satisfy the deepest and most universal
necessities of our nature. In making man independent of God by
§ 5.] AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 157
assuming that God cannot control free agents witliout destroying
their liberty, it makes all prayer for the controlling grace of
God over ourselves and others a mockery, and throws man back
completely on his own resources to grapple with sin and the powers
of darkness without hope of deliverance.
6. It makes redemption (in the sense of a deliverance from sin)
unnecessary or impossible. It is unnecessary that there should be
a redeemer for a race which has not fallen, and which has full
ability to avoid all sin or to recover itself from its power. And it
is impossible, if free agents are independent of the control of God.
7. It need hardly be said that a system which asserts, that Adam's
sin injured only himself; that men are born into the world in the
state in which Adam was created ; that men may, and often do,
live without sin ; that we have no need of divine assistance in
order to be holy ; and that Christianity has no essential superiority
over heathenism or natural religion, is altogether at variance with
the word of God. The opposition indeed between Pelagianism and
the gospel is so open and so radical that the former has never been
regarded as a form of Christianity at all. It has, in other words,
never been the faith of any organized Christian church. It is little
more than a form of Rationalism.
§ 5. Augustinian Doctrine.
The Philosophical Element of Augustine'' s Doctrine.
There are two elements in Augustine's doctrine of sin : the one
metaphysical or philosophical, the other moral or religious. The
one a speculation of the understanding, the other derived from his
religious experience and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The one
has passed away, leaving little more trace on the history of doctrine
than other speculations, whether Aristotelian or Platonic. The
other remains, and has given form to Christian doctrine fi'om that
day to this. This is not to be wondered at. Nothing is more
uncertain and unsatisfactory than the speculations of the under-
standing or philosophical theories. Whereas nothing is more certain
and universal than the moral consciousness of men and the truths
which it reveals. And as the Scriptures, being the work of God,
do and must conform their teachings to what God teaches in the
constitution of our nature, doctrines founded on the twofold teachino;
of the Spirit, in his word and in the hearts of his people, remain
unchanged from generation to generation, while the speculations of
philosophy or of philosophical theologians pass away as the leaves
158 PART II. Ch. VIII. — sin,
of the forest. No man now concerns liimself about the philosopliy
of Origen, or of the new Platonists, or of Augustine, while tlie
language of David in the fifty-first Psalm is used to express the
experience and convictions of all the people of God in all ages and
in all parts of the world.
Tlie metaphysical element in Augustine's doctrine of sin arose
from his controversy with the Manicheans. Manes taught that
sin was a substance. This Augustine denied. With him it was a
maxim that " Omne esse bonum est." But \? esse (being) is good,
and if evil is the opposite of good, then evil must be the opposite
of being, or nothing, i. e., the negation or privation of being. Thus
he was led to adopt the language of the new Platonists and of
Origen, who, by a different process, were brought to define evil as
the negation of being, as Plotinus calls it, o-rcpT/o-ts rov ovto<; ; and
Origen says, irao-a rj kukm ouSeV ia-TLv, and evil itself he says is ia-rep^a--
Oai Tov wTos. In thus making being good and the negation of being
evil, Augustine seems to have made the same mistake which
other philosophers have so often made, — of confounding physical
and moral good. When God at the beginning declared all things,
material and immaterial, which He had made, to be very good. He
simply declared them to be suited to the ends for which they were
severally made. He did not intend to teach us that moral goodness
could be predicated of matter or of an irrational animal. In other
cases the word good means agreeable, or adapted to give pleasure.
In others again, it means morally right. To infer from the fact that
everything which God made is good, or that every esse is bonum,
that therefore moral evil beino; the negation of sjood must be the
negation of being, is as illogical as to argue that because honey is
good (in the sense of being agreeable to the taste) therefore worm-
wood is bad, in the sense of being sinful. Although Augustine
held the language of those philosophers who, both before and since,
destroy the very nature of sin in making it mere limitation of being,
yet he was very far from holding the same system. (1.) They
made sin necessary, as arising from the very nature. of a creature.
He made it voluntary. (2.) They made it purely physical. He
made it moral. With him it includes pollution and guilt. With
them it included neither. (3.) With Augustine this negation was
not merely passive, it was not the simple want of being, it was such
privation as tended to destruction. (4.) Evil with Augustine,
therefore, as was more fully and clearly taught by his followers,
was not mere privation, nor simply defect. That a stone cannot
see, involves the negation of the power of vision. But it is not!
§ 5.] AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 159
a defect, because the power of vision does not belong to stones.
Blindness is a defect in an animal, but not sin. Tiie absence of
love to God in a rational creature is sin, because it is the absence
of something which belongs to such a creature, and which he ought
to have. In the true Augustinian sense, therefore, sin is negation
only as it is the privation of moral good, — the privatio boni, or as
it was afterwards generally expressed, a want of conformity to the
law or standard of good.
Augustine^ s Reasons for making Sin a Negation.
In thus making sin negation, Augustine had principally two
ends in view. (1.) To show that sin is not necessary. If it were
something existing of itself, or something created by the power of
God, it was beyond the power of man. He was its victim, not its
author. (2.) He desired to show that it was not due to the divine
efficiency. According to his theory of God's relation to the world,
not only all that is, every substance, is created and upheld by God,
but all activity or power, all energy by which positive effects are
produced, is the energy of God. If sin, therefore, was anything in
itself, anything more than a defect, or a want of conformity to a
rule, God must be its author. He, therefore, took such a view of
the psychological nature of sin, that it did not require an efficient.,
but as he often said only a deficient cause. If a man, to use the
old Augustinian illustration, strike the cords of an untuned harp,
he is the cause of the sound but not of the discord. So God is the
cause of the sinner's activity but not of the discordance between
his acts and the laws of eternal truth and right.^
The Moral Element of His Doctrine.
The true Augustinian doctrine of sin was that which the illus-
trious father drew from his own religious experience, as guided and
determined by the Spirit of God. He was, (1.) Conscious of sin.
He recognized himself as guilty and polluted, as amenable to the
justice of God and offensive to his holiness. (2.) He felt himself
to be thus guilty and polluted not only because of deliberate acts
of transgression, but also for his affections, feelings, and emotions.
This sense of sin attached not only to these positive and consciously
active states of mind, but also to the mere absence of right affections,
to hardness of heart, to the want of love, humility, faith, and other
Christian virtues, or to their feebleness and inconstancy. (3.) He
1 See, on Augustine's theorv, Miiller, Lehre von der Sunde, vol. i. pp. 338-349. Ritter's
Geschichte der CkrislKchen Philosophie, vol ii. pp. 337-425.
160 PART II. Ch. VIII. — sin.
recognized the fact that he had always been a sinner. As far back
as consciousness extended it was the consciousness of sin. (4.) He
was deeply convinced that he had no power to change his
moral nature or to make himself holy ; that whatever liberty he
possessed, however free he was in sinning, or (after regeneration)
in holy acting, he had not the liberty of ability which Pelagians
claimed as an essential prerogative of humanity. (5.) It was
involved in this consciousness of sin as including guilt or just
liability to punishment, as well as pollutioti, that it could not be a
necessary evil, but must have its origin in the free act of man, and
be therefore voluntary. Voluntary: (a.) In having its origin in
an act of the will ; (6.) In having its seat in the will ; (c.) In
consisting in the determination of the will to evil : the word will
being here, as by Augustine generally, taken in its widest sense for
everything in man that does not fall under the category of the
understanding. (6.) What consciousness taught him to be true
with reo-ard to himself he saw to be true in regard to others. All
men showed themselves to be sinners. They all gave evidence of
sinfulness as soon as they gave evidence of reason. They all
appeared not only as transgressors of the law of God, but as spiritu-
ally dead, devoid of all evidence of spiritual life. They were the
willing slaves of sin, entirely unable to deliver themselves from
their bondage to corruption. No man had ever given proof of
possessing the power of self regeneration. All who gave evidence
of being regenerated, with one voice ascribed the work not to
themselves, but to the grace of God. From these facts of con-
sciousness and experience Augustine drew the inevitable conclu-
sion, (1.) That if men are saved it cannot be by their own merit,
but solely through the undeserved love of God. (2.) That the
regeneration of the soul must be the exclusive and supernatural
work of the Holy Ghost ; that the sinner could neither effect the
work nor cooperate in its production. In other words, that grace
is certainly efficacious or irresistible. (3.) That salvation is of
grace or of the sovereign mercy of God, (a.) In that God might
justly have left men to perish in their apostasy without any pro-
vision for their redemption. (5.) In that men, being destitute of
the power of doing anything holy or meritorious, their justification
cannot be by works, but must be a matter of favour, (c.) In that it
depends not on the will of the persons saved, but on the good pleas-
ure of God, who are to be made partakers of the redemption of
Christ. In other words, election to eternal life must be founded
on the sovereign pleasure of God, and not on the foresight of good
§5.] AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 161
works. (4.) A fourth inference from the principles of Aiigustine
was the perseverance of the saints. If God of his own good pleasure
elects some to eternal life, they cannot fail of salvation. It thus
appears that as all the distinguishing doctrines of the Pelagians are
the logical consequences of their principle of plenary ability as the
ground and limit of obligation, so the distinguishing doctrines of
Augustine are the logical consequences of his principle of the entire
inability of fallen man to do anything spiritually good.
Taught by his own experience that he was from his birtli guilty
and polluted, and that he had no power to change his own nature,
and seeing that all men are involved in the same sinfulness and
helplessness, he accepted the Scriptural solution of these facts of
consciousness and observation, and therefore held, (1.) That God
created man originally in his own image and likeness in knowl-
edge, righteousness, and holiness, immortal, and invested with do-
minion over the creatures. He held also that Adam was endowed
with perfect liberty of the will, not only with spontaneity and the
power of self-determination, but with the power of choosing good
or evil, and thus of determining his own character. (2.) That be-
ing left to the freedom of his own will, Adam, under the tempta-
tion of the Devil, voluntarily sinned against God, and thus fell
from the estate in which he was created. (3.) That the conse-
quences of this sin upon Adam were the loss of the divine image,
and the corruption of his whole nature, so that he became spirit-
ually dead, and thus indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all
spiritual good. Besides this spiritual death, he became mortal, lia-
ble to all the miseries of this life, and to eternal death. (4.) Such
was the union between Adam and his descendants, that the same
consequences of his transgression came on them that fell upon him.
They are born the children of wrath, i. e., in a state of condem-
nation, destitute of the image of God, and morally depraved.
(5.) This inherent, hereditary depravity is truly and properly of
the nature of sin, involving both guilt and corruption. In its formal
nature it consists in the privation of original rigliteousness and (con-
cupiscence) inordinatio natures^ disorder of the whole nature. It is
of the nature of a habitus as distinguished from an act, activity or
agency. It is voluntary, in the sense mentioned above, especially
in that it did not arise from necessity of nature, or from the effi-
ciency of God, but from the free agency of Adam. (6.) That the
loss of original righteousness and the corruption of nature conse-
quent on the fall of Adam are penal inflictions, being the punish-
ment of his first sin. (7.) That regeneration, or effectual calling,
VOL. II. 11
162 PART n. Ch. viii. — sin.
is a supernatural act of the Holy Spirit, in which the soul is tlie
subject and not the agent ; that it is sovereign, granted or with-
held according to the good pleasure of God ; and consequently that
salvation is entirely of grace.
This is the Augustinian system in all that is essential. It is
this which has remained, and been the abiding form of doctrine
among the great body of evangelical Christians from that day to
this. It is of course admitted that Augustine held much connected
with the several points above mentioned, which was peculiar to the
man or to the age in which he lived, but which does not belong to
Augustinianism as a system of doctrine. As Lutheranism does
not include all the individual opinions of Luther, and as Calvinism
does not include all the personal views of Calvin, so there is much
taught by Augustine which does not belong to Augustinianism. He
taught that all sin is the negation of being ; that liberty is ability,
so that in denying to fallen man ability to change his own heart,
he denies to him freedom of the will ; that concupiscence (in the
lower sense of the word), as an instinctive feeling, is sinful ; that
a sinful nature is propagated by the very law of generation ; that
baptism removes the guilt of original sin ; and that all unbaptized
infants (as Romanists still teach and almost all Protestants deny)
are lost. These, and other similar points are not integral parts of
his system, and did not receive the sanction of the Church when
it pronounced in favour of his doctrine as opposed to that of the
Pelagians. In like manner it is a matter of minor importance how
he understood the nature of the union between Adam and his pos-
terity ; whether he held the representative, or the realistic theory ;
or whether he ultimately sided for Traducianism as against Crea-
tionism, or for the latter as against the former. On these points his
language is confused and undecided. It is enough that he held that
such was the union between Adam and his race, that the whole
human family stood their probation in him and fell with him in his
first transgression, so that all the evils which are the consequences
of that transgression, including physical and spiritual death, are
the punishment of that sin. On this point he is perfectly explicit.
When it was objected by Julian that sin cannot be the punishment
of sin, he replied that we must distinguish three things, that we
must know, "aliud esse peccatum, aliud poenam peccati,aliud utrum-
que, id est, ita peccatum, ut ipsum sit etiam pcena peccati, ....
pertinet originale peccatum ad hoc genus tertiuni, ubi sic peccatum
est, ut ipsum sit et poena peccati."^ Again he says : " Est [pecca-
1 Optu Jmpeffectum, i. 47 ; Woi-ks, edit. Benedictines, vol. x. pp. 1495, d, and 1496, d.
§ 5.J AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 163
turn] .... non solum voluntarium atque possibile iinde libe-
rum est abstinere ; verum etiam necessarium peccatum, undo absti-
nere Hberum non est, quod jam non solum peccatum, sed etiam poena
peccati est." ^ Spiritual death (i. e., original sin or inherent corrup-
tion), says Wiggers, is, according to Augustine, the special and prin-
cipal penalty of Adam's first transgression, which penalty has passed
on all men.^ This is in exact accordance with the doctrine of the
Apostle, who says : " In Adam all die," 1 Cor. xv. 22 ; and that
a sentence of condemnation (^Kplfjia cis KaraKpifia) for one offence
passed on all men, Rom. v. 16, 17. This Augustine clung to as
a Scriptural doctrine, and as a historical fact. This, however, is a
doctrine which men have ever found it hard to believe, and a f;ict
which they have ever been slow to admit. Pelagius said : ^ " Nulla
ratione concedi ut Deus, qui propria peccata remittit, imputet
aliena." And Julian vehemently exclaims, " Amolire te itaque
cum tali Deo tuo de Ecclesiarum medio : non est ipse, cui
Patriarchae, cui Prophets, cui Apostoli crediderunt, in quo spera-
vit et sperat Ecclesia primitivorum, qua conscripta est in coelis :
non est ipse quern credit jndicem rationabilis creatura ; quem
Spiritus sanctus juste judicaturum esse denuntiat. Nemo pruden-
tium, pro tali Domino suum unquam sanguinem fudisset : nee
enim merebatur dilectionis affectum, ut suscipiendse pro se onus
imponeret passionis. Postremo iste quem inducis, si esset uspiam,
reus convinceretur esse non Deus ; judicandus a vero Deo meo,
non judicaturus pro Deo." * To this great objection Augustine
gives different answers. (1.) He refers to Scriptural examples
in which men have been punished for the sins of others. (2.) He
appeals to the fact that God visits the sins of parents upon their
children. (3.) Sometimes he says we should rest satisfied with the
assurance that the judge of all the earth must do right, whether we
can see the justice of his ways or not. (4.) At others he seems to
adopt the realistic doctrine that all men were in Adam, and that his
sin was their sin, being the act of generic humanity. As Levi was
in the loins of Abraham, and was tithed in him, so we were in the
loins of Adam, and sinned in him. (5.) And, finally, he urges
that as we are justified by the righteousness of Christ, it is not
incongruous that we should be condemned for the sin of Adam.^
It will be observed that some of these grounds are inconsistent with
1 Opus rmperfechim, v. 59; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. x., p. 2026, b.
2 Angustinismus und Pelagianismus, edit. Hamburg, 1833, vol. i. p. 104.
8 A/JU(1 Aiti/nntinum de I'tccdOiruin Mtnitu tl lieiiUiAuiin:, III. ill. 5; Works, vol. x. p. 289, a.
* Opus Imperfeclum contra ./aliniium, l. 50; iVorks, vol. x. p. 1501, a, b.
5 See Miinscher's Dogmengeschichte, vol. iv. p. 195.
164 PART n. Ch. vni.— sm.
others. If one be valid, the others are invalid. If we reconcile
the condemnation of men on account of the sin of Adam, on the
ground that he was our representative, or that he sustained the
relation which all parents bear to their children, we renounce
the ground of a realistic union. If the latter theory be true, then
Adam's sin was our act as truly as it was his. If we adopt the
representative theory, his act was not our act in any other sense
than that in which a representative acts for his constituents.
From this it is plain, (1.) That Augustine had no clear and settled
conviction as to the nature of the union between Adam and his
race which is the ground of the imputation of his sin to his posterity,
any more than he had about the origin of the soul ; and (2.) That
no particular theory' on that point, whether the representative or
realistic, can properly be made an element of Augustinianism, as a
historical and church form of doctrine.
§ 6. Doctrine of the OhurcJi of Rome.
This is a point very difficult to decide. Romanists themselves
are as much at variance as to what their Church teaches concern-
ing original sin as those who do not belong to their communion.
The sources of this difficulty are, (1.) First, the great diversity of
opinions on this subject prevailing in the Latin Church before the
authoritative decisions of the Council of Trent and of the Romish
Catechism. (2.) The ambiguity and want of precision or fulness
in the decisions of that council. (3.) The different interpretations
given by prominent theologians of the true meaning of the Triden-
tine canons.
Diversity of Sentiment in the Latin Church.
As to the first of these points it may be remarked that there
were mainly three conflicting elements in the Latin Church
before the Reformation, in relation to the whole subject of sin.
(1.) The doctrine of Augustine. (2.) That of the Semi-Pela-
gians, and (3.) That of those of the schoolmen who endeavoured
to find a middle ground between the other two systems. The
doctrine of Augustine, as exhibited above, was sanctioned by
the Latin Church, and pronounced to be the true orthodox
faith. But even during the lifetime of Augustine, and to a
greater extent in the following century, serious departures from
his system began to prevail. These departures related to all the
intimately connected doctrines of sin, grace, and predestination.
Pelagianism was universally disclaimed and condemned. It was
I
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 165
admitted that the race of man fell in Adam ; that his sin affected
injuriously his posterity as well as himself; that men are born in
a state of alienation from God ; that they need the power of the
Holy Spirit in order to their restoration to holiness. But what is
the nature of original sin, or of that depravity or deterioration of
our nature derived from Adam ? And, What are the remains of
the divine image which are still preserved, or what is the power
for good which fallen men still possess ? And What is to be
understood by the grace of God and the extent of its influence ?
And What is the ground on which God brings some and not
others to the enjoyment of eternal life ? These were questions
which received very different answers. Augustine, as we have
seen, answered the first of these questions by saying that original
sin consists not only in the loss of original righteousness, but also
in concupiscence, or disorder, or corruption of nature, which is truly
and properly sin, including both guilt and pollution. The second
question he answered by saying that fallen man has no power to
effect what is spiritually good ; he can neither regenerate himself,
prepare himself for regeneration, nor cooperate with the grace of
God in that work. These principles necessarily lead to the doctrines
of efficacious or irresistible grace and of sovereign election, as was
seen and universally admitted. It was these necessary consequences,
rather than the principles themselves, which awakened opposition.
But to get rid of the consequences it was necessary that the prin-
ciples should be refuted. This opposition to Augustinianism arose
with the monks and prevailed principally among them. This, as
Gieseler^ says, was very natural. Augustine taught that man
could do nothing good of himself, and could acquire no merit in
the sight of God. The monks believed that they could do not only
all, but more than all that God required of them. Else why submit
to their vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience ? The party
thus formed against the orthodox or established doctrine was called
Semi-Pelagian, because it held a middle ground between Pelagius
and Augustine.
The Semi- Pelagians.
The principal leaders of this party were John Cassianus, an
Eastern monk and disciple of Chrysostom ; Vincentius Lerinensis,
and Faustus of Rhegium. The most important work of Cassian
was entitled " Collationes Patrum," which is a collection of
dialogues on various subjects. He was a devout rather than a
speculative writer, relying on the authority of Scripture for the
1 Kirchenc/eschichte, vol. vi. p. 350.
166 PART n. Ch. vni. — sin.
support of liis doctrine. Educated in tlie Greek Church and trained
in a monastery, all his prepossessions were adverse to Augustinianism.
And when he transferred his residence to Marseilles in the south
of France, and found himself in the midst of churches who bowed
to the authority of Augustine, he set himself to modify and soften,
but not directly to oppose the distinguishing doctrines of that father.
Vincent of Lerins was a man of a different spirit and of higher
po^vers. His reliance was on tradition. He held the highest
doctrine concei-ning the Church, and taught that communion with
her in faith and ordinances was the one essential condition of salva-
tion. He was the author of the celebrated formula as to the rule of
faith, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ah omnibus creditum est. His
principal work is entitled " Commonitorium," or Remembrancer, a
collection mainly of extracts. This work was long considered a
standard among Romanists, and has been held in high repute by
many Protestants for the ability which it displays. It was intended
as a guard against heresy, by exhibiting what the leaders of the
Church had taught against heretics, and to determine the principle
on which the authority of the fathers was to be admitted. A single
father, even though a bishop, confessor, or martyr, might err, and
his teachings be properly disregarded, but when he concurred with
the general drift of ecclesiastical teaching, i. e., with tradition, he
was to be fully believed.^
The ablest and most influential of the leaders of the Semi-Pelagian
party was Faustus of Rhegium, who secured the condemnation of
Lucidus, an extreme advocate of the Augustinian doctrine, in the
Synod of Aries, 475, a. d. ; and who was called upon by the council
to write the work " De gratia Dei et humange mentis libero arbitrio,"
which attained great celebrity and authority. The Semi-Pelagians,
however, were far from agreeing among themselves either as to sin
or as to grace. Cassian taught that the effects of Adam's sin on his
posterity were, (1.) That they became mortal, and subject to the
physical infirmities of this life. (2.) That the knowledge of nature
and of the divine law which Adam originally possessed, was in a
great measure preserved until the sons of Seth intermarried with
the daughters of Cain, when the race became greatly deteriorated.
(3.) That the moral effects of the fall Avere to weaken the soul in
all its power for good, so that men constantly need the assistance
»f divine grace. (4.) What that grace was, whether the supernat-
ural influence of the Spirit, the providential efficiency of God, or
his various gifts of faculties and of knowledge, he nowhere distinctly
1 See Wiggers' Augustinismus und Pelagianismus, vol. ii. chap. 9.
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 167
explains. He admitted that men could not save themselves ; but
held that they were not spiritually dead ; they were sick ; and
constantly needed the aid of the Great Physician. He taught that
man sometimes began the work of conversion ; sometimes God ;
and sometimes, in a certain sense, God saves the unwilling,^
Vincent evidently regarded the Augustinian doctrine of original
sin as making God the author of evil ; for, he says, it assumes that
God has created a nature, which acting according to its own laws
and under the impulse of an enslaved will, can do nothing but sin.^
And he pronounces heretical those who teach that gi'ace saves those
who do not ask, seek, or knock, in evident allusion to the doctrine
of Augustine that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God who showeth mercy. Faustus admitted a
moral corruption of nature as the consequence of the fall of
Adam, which he called original sin (origiyiale delictum). In his
letter to Lucidus he anathematizes the doctrine of Pelagius that
man is born " without sin." ^ From this deteriorated, infirm state,
no man can deliver himself. He needs the grace of God. But
what that grace was is doubtful. From some passages of his writ-
ing there would seem to be meant by it only, or principally, the
moral influence of tlie truth as revealed by the Spirit in the Scrip-
tures. He says God draws men to him, but " Quid est attrahere
nisi praedicare, nisi scripturarum consolationibus excitare, increpa-
tionibus deterrere, desideranda proponere, intentare metuenda, ju-
dicium comminari, prgemium polliceri ? " * Semi-Pelagians agreed,
however, in rejecting the Pelagian doctrine that Adam's sin injured
only himself ; they admitted that the effects of that sin passed on all
men, affecting both the soul and body. It rendered the body
mortal, and liable to disease and suffering ; and the soul it weak-
ened, so that it became prone to evil and incapable, without divine
assistance, of doing anything spiritually good. But as against
Augustine they held, at least according to the statements of Prosper
and Hilary, the advocates of Augustinianism in the south of France,
(1.) That the beginning of salvation is with man. Man begins to
seek God, and then God aids him. (2.) That this incipient turning
of the soul towards God is something good, and in one sense meri-
toi'ious. (3.) That the soul, in virtue of its liberty of will or ability
for good, cooperates with the grace of God in regeneration as well
as in sanctification. That these charges were well founded maj'
be inferred from the decisions of the councils of Orange and
1 See Wiggers' Augustinismus und Pelagianismus, vol. ii. chap. 2.
2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 2U. 8 Jbid. vol. ii. p. 244. * Ibid. p. 266.
168 PART n. Ch. vm. — sm.
Valence, a. d. 529, in which the doctrines of Augustine were again
sanctioned. As the decisions of those councils were ratified by the
Pope they were, according to the papal theory, declared to be the
faith of the Church. Among the points thus pronounced to be
included in the true Scriptural doctrine, are, (1.) That the conse-
quence of Adam's sin is not confined to the body, or to the lower
faculties of the soul, but involves the loss of ability to spiritual
good. (2.) The sin derived from Adam is spiritual death.
(3.) Grace is granted not because men seek it, but the disposition
to seek is a work of grace and the gift of God. (4.) The beginning
of faith and the disposition to believe is not from the human will,
but from the grace of God. (5.) Believing, willing, desiring,
seeking, asking, knocking at the door of mercy, are all to be referred
to the work of the Spirit and not to the good which belongs to the
nature of fallen man. The two great points, therefore, in dispute
between the Augustinians and Semi-Pelagians were decided in
favour of the former. Those points were (1.) That original sin,
or the corruption of nature derived from Adam, was not simply a
weakening of our power for good, but was spiritual death ; really
sin, incapacitating the soul for any spiritual good. And (2.) That
in the work of conversion it is not man that begins, but the Spirit
of God. The sinner has no power to turn hiuiself unto God, but
is turned or renewed by divine grace before he can do anything
spiritually good.^
The decisions of the councils of Orange and Valence in favour
of Augustinianism, did not arrest the controversy. The Semi-
Pelagian party still continued numerous and active, and so far
gained the ascendency, that in the ninth century Gottschalk was
condemned for teaching the doctrine of predestination in the sense
of Augustine. From this period to the time of the lleformation
and the decisions of the Council of Trent, great diversity of opinion
prevailed in the Latin Church on all the questions relating to sin,
grace, and predestination. It having come to be generally admitted
that original rigliteousness was a supernatural gift, it was also gen-
erally held that the effect of Adam's sin upon himself and upon his
posterity was the loss of that righteousness. This was its only sub-
jective effect. The soul, therefore, is left in the state In which it
was originally created, and in which it existed, some said a longer,
others a shorter, period, or no perceptible period at all, before the
receipt of the supernatural endowment. It Is in this state that men
are born into the world since the apostasy of Adam.
1 Wiggers' Augmtinisrmis und Pelagianismus, vol. ii. chap. 20.
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 169
The Doctrine of Anselm.
This loss of original righteousness was universally regarded as a
penal evil. It was the punishment of the first sin of Adam which
came equally upon him and upon all his descendants. The ques-
tion now is, Wliat is the moral state of a soul destitute of original
righteousness considered as a supernatural gift ? It was the differ-
ent views taken as to the answer to that question, M-hich gave rise
to the conflicting views of the nature and consequences of original
sin.
1. Some said that this negative state was itself sinful. Ad-
mitting that original sin is simply the loss of original righteous-
ness, it was nevertheless truly and properly sin. This was the
ground taken by Anselm, the father of the scholastic philosophy
and theoloojv. In his work, " De Conceptu Virginali et Originali
peccato," he says of children, ^ " Quod in illis non est justitia, quam
debent habere, non hoc fecit illorum, voluntas personalis, sicut in
Adam, sed egestas naturalis, quam ipsa natura accepit ab Adam —
facit natura personas infantium peccatrices. Nullam infxntibus
injustitiam super praedictam nuditatem justitiae.^ Peccatum origi-
nale aliud intelligere nequeo, nisi ipsam — factam per inobedientiam
Adge justitise debit® nuditatem."^ This original sin, however,
even in infants, although purely negative, is nevertheless truly and
properly sin.* Anselm says, " Omne peccatum est injustitia, et
originale peccatum est absolute peccatum, unde sequitur quod est
injustitia. Item si Deus non damnat nisi propter injustitiam ; dam-
nat autem aliquem propter originale peccatum, ergo non est aliud
originale peccatum quam injustitia. Quod si ita est, originale
peccatum non est aliud quam injustitia, i. e., absentia debitae justi-
ti»."5
Doctrine of Ahelard.
2. The ground taken by others of the schoolmen was that the
loss of original righteousness left Adam precisely in the state in
which he was created, and therefore in puris naturalihus (i. e., in
the simple essential attributes of his nature). And as his descend-
ants share his fate, they are born in the same state. There is no
inherent hereditary corruption, no moral character either good or
bad. The want of a supernatural gift not belonging to the nature
of man, and which must be bestowed as a favour, cannot be ac-
1 C. 23. 2 c. 27.
8 C. 27; see Kollner's Symholik der heiligen apostolischen katholischen rSmiscken Kirche,
vol. ii. § 81, p. 9M. * C. 3, De Originale Peccato,
5 Ilagenbach, Dogmengeschichtc, vol. ii. p. 139.
170 PART n. ch. vm. — sin.
counted to men as sin. Original sin, therefore, in the posterity of
Adam can consist in nothing but the imputation to them of his first
transgression. They suffer the punishment of that sin, wliich pun-
ishment is the loss of original rio;hteousness. Accordino- to this
view, original sin is poena but not culpa. It is true that the inev-
itable consequence of this privation of righteousness is tliat the
lower powers of man's nature gain the ascendency over the higher,
and that he grows up in sin. Nevertheless there is no inlierent or
subjective sin in the new-born infant. There is a natural prone-
ness to sin arisinor out of the original and normal constitution of our
nature, and the absence of original righteousness which was a fre-
num, or check by which the lower powers were to be kept in sub-
jection. But this being the condition in which Adam came from
the hands of his Creator, it cannot be in itself sinful. Sin consists
in assent and purpose. And, therefore, until the soul assents to
this dominion of its lower nature and deliberately acts in accord-
ance with it, it cannot be chargeable with any personal, inherent
sin. There is therefore no sin of nature, as distinguished from
actual sin. It is true, as the advocates of this theory taught, in
obedience to the universal faith of the Church and the clear doc-
trine of the Bible, that men are born in sin. But this is the guilt
of Adam's first sin, and not tlieir own inherent corruption. They
admitted the correctness of the Latin version of Romans x. 12,
which makes the Apostle say that all men sinned in Adam (m quo
omnes peccaverunt). But they understood that passage to teach
nothing more than the imputation of Adam's first sin, and not any
hereditary inherent corruption of nature. This was the theory of
original sin adopted by Abelard, who hehl that nothing was prop-
erly of the nature of sin but an act performed witli an evil inten-
tion. As there can be no such intention in infants there can be,
properly speaking, no sin in them. There is a proneness to
sin which he calls vitium ; but sin consists in consent to tliis incli-
nation, and not in the inclination itself " Vitium itaque est, quo
ad peccandum proni efficimur, hoc est inclinamur ad consentiendum
ei, quod non convenit, ut illud scilicet faciamus aut dimittamus.
Hunc vero consensum proprie peccatum nominamus, hoc est cul-
pam animie, qua damnationem meretur."^ He admitted original
sin as a punishment, or as the guilt of Adam's sin, but this was
sxternal and not inherent.^ This view of the subject was strenu-
1 Ethica seu liber dicttis scito se ipsum, 2, 3.
2 In Ep. ad Rom. ii. p. 592. See Hitler's Geschichte der Christlkhen Philosopkie, vol. iii.
pp. 427-429.
i
§ 6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 171
ouslv maintained by some of the theologians of the Roman Church
at the time of the Reformation, especially by Catharinus and
Pighius. The latter, according to Cliemnitz,^ thus states his doc-
trine : " Quod nee carentia justitise originalis, nee concupiscentia
habeat raticnem peccati, sive in parvulis, sive adultis, sive ante,
sive post baptismum. Has enim afFectiones non esse vitia, sed
naturiB conditiones in nobis. Peccatum igitur originis non esse
defectum, non vitium aliquod non depravationem aliquam, non habi-
tum corruptum, non qualitatem vitiosam haerentem in nostra sub-
stantia, ut quae sit sine omni vitio et depravatione, sed hoc tantum
esse peccatum originis, quod actualis transgressio Adae reatu, tan-
tum et poena transmissa et propagata sit ad posteros sine vitio aliquo
et pravitate haerente in ipsorum substantia : et reatum hunc esse,
quod propter Adge peccatum extorres facti sumus regni coelorum,
subject! regno mortis et seternae damnationi, et omnibus humante
naturae miseriis involuti. Sicut ex servis, qui proprio vitio liberta-
tem amiserunt, nascuntur servi : non suo, sed parentum vitio. Et
sicut filius scorti, sustinet infamiam matris, sine proprio aliquo in se
haerente vitio.'"'^
Doctrine of Thomas Aquinas.
3. The third form of doctrine which prevailed during this period
was that proposed by Thomas Aquinas (a. d. 1224-74) a Domin-
ican monk, the Doctor Angelicus of the schoolmen, and by far
the most influential theologian in the Latin Church since the days
of Augustine. His " Summa Theologiae " wa^long regarded as a
standard work among Romanists, and is still referred to as an
authority both by Romanists and Protestants. Thomas approached
mucli nearer to Augustine than the other theologians of his age.
He taught (1.) That original righteousness was to Adam a super-
natural gift. (2.) That by his transgression he forfeited that gift
for iiimself and his posterity. (3.) That original righteousness
consisted essentially in the fixed bias of the will towards God, or
the subjection of the will to God. (4.) That the inevitable conse-
quence or adjunct of the loss of this original righteousness, this
conversion of the will towards God, is the aversion of the will
from God. (5.) That original sin, therefore, consists in two things,
first, the loss of original righteousness and second, the disorder of
the whole nature. Tlie one he called the formale the other the
materiale of original sin. To use his own illustration, a knife is
1 Examen Concilii Tridentini, de Peccato Originale, edit. Frankfort, 1674, part i. p. 100
2 See also Kollner's Symbolik, vol. ii. p. 285.
172 PART 11. ch. vni. — sin.
iron ; the iron is the material, the form is tliat which makes the
material a knife. So in original sin this aversion of the will from
God (as a habit), is the substance of original sin, it owes its exist-
ence and nature to the loss of original righteousness. (6.) The
soul, therefore, after the loss of its primal rectitude, does not re-
main in puris naturalibus, but is in a state of corruption and sin.
This state he sometimes calls inordinatio virium animce ; some-
times a deordinatio ; sometimes aversio voluntatis a bono incom-
municahili ; sometimes a corrupt disposition, as when he says,'
" Causa hujns corruptee dispositionis, quae dicitur originale pecca-
tum, est una tantum, scilicet privatio originalis justitise, per quam
sublata est subjectio humanae mentis ad Deum." Most frequently,
in accordance with the usus loquendi of his own and of subsequent
periods, this positive pai't of original sin is called concupiscence.
This is a word which it is very important to understand, because it
is used in such different senses even in relation to the same sub-
ject. Some by concupiscence mean simply the sexual instinct ;
others, what belongs to our sensuous nature in general ; others,
everything in man which has the seen and temporal for its object ;
and others still, for the wrong bias of the soul, by which, being
averse to God, it turns to the creature and to evil. Everything
depends therefore on the sense in which the word is taken, when
it is said that original sin consists, positively considered, in concu-
piscence. If by concupiscence is meant merely our sensuous na-
ture, then original sin is seated mainly in the body and in the
animal affections, and the higher powers of the soul are unaffected
by its contamination. B}' Thomas Aquinas the word is taken in
its widest sense, as is obvious from its equivalents just mentioned,
aversion from God, corrupt disposition, disorder, or deformity, of
the powers of the soul. It is in this sense, he says, " Originale
peccatum concupiscentia dicitur." (7.) As to the constituent
elements of this original corruption, or as he expresses it, the
wounds under which our fallen nature is suffering, he says, they
include, (a.) Ignorance and want of the right knowledge of God in
the intelligence. (6.) An aversion in the will from the highest
good, (c.) In the feelings or affections, or rather in that dej)artment
of our nature of which the feelings are the manifestations, a tend-
ency to delight in created things. The seat of original sin, there-
fore, with him is the whole soul. (8.) This concupiscence or inhe-
rent corruption, is not an act, or agency, or activity, but a habit,
i. e., an immanent inherent disposition of the niiiul.''^ (9.) Finally,
1 Summa, ii. i. qu. Ixxxii. art. ii. edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 144 of second set. 2 jbid. art i
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME 173
original sin is a penal evil. The loss of original righteousness and
the consequent disorder of our nature, are the penalty of Adam's
first transgression. So far the doctiine of Thomas is in strict ac-
cordance with that of Augustine. His discussion of the subject
might be framed into an exposition of the answer in the " West-
minster Catechism " which declares the sinfulness of that estate
into which men fell, to consist in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the
want of original rigliteousness, and the corruption of his whole
nature. The point of difference relates to the degree of injury
received from the apostasy of Adam, or the depth of that corrup-
tion of nature derived from him. This Thomas calls a languor or
weakness. Men in consequence of the fall are utterly unable to
save themselves, or to do anything really good in the sight of God
without the aid of divine grace. But they still have the power
to cooperate with that grace. They cannot, as the Semi-Pelagians
taught, begin the woi.'k of turning unto God, and therefore need
preventing grace (^gratia prceveniens'), but with that grace they
are enabled to cooperate. This makes the difference between the
effectual (irresistible) grace of Augustine, and the synergism which
enters into all other systems.
Doctrine of the Scotists.
4. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, Professor of Theology at Oxford,
Paris, and Cologne, where he died a. d. 1308, was the great oppo-
nent of Thomas Aquinas. So far as the subject of original sin is
concerned, he sided with the Semi-Pelagians. He made original
sin to consist solely in the loss of original righteousness, and as this
was purely a supernatural gift, not pertaining to the natui'e of
man, its loss left Adam and his posterity after him, precisely in the
state in which man was originally created. Whatever of disorder
is consequent on this loss of righteousness is not of the nature of
sin. " Peccatum originale," he says, " non potest esse aliud quam
ista privatio [ justitias originalis]. Non enim est concupiscentia :
tum quia ilia est naturalis, tum quia ipsa est in parte sensitiva, ubi
non est peccatum." ^ Men, therefore, are born into the world in
puris naturalibus, not in the Pelagian sense, as Pelagians do not
admit any supernatural gift of righteousness to Adam, but in the
sense that they possess all the essential attributes of their nature
uninjured and uncontaminated. As free will, i. e., the ability to
do and to be whatever is required of man by his Maker, belongs
essentially to his nature, this also remains since the fall. It is in-
1 Kollner's SymboUk, vol. ii. p. 295.
174 PART 11. ch. vni.— sin.
deed weakened and beset with difficulties, as the balance wheel of
our nature, original righteousness, is gone, but still it exists. Man
needs divine assistance. He cannot do good, or make himself good
without the grace of God. But the dependence of which Scotus
speaks is rather that of the creature upon the creator, than that of
the sinner upon the Spirit of God. His endeavour seems to have
been to reduce the supernatural to the natural ; to confound the
distinction constantly made in the Bible and by the Church, be-
tween the providential efficiency of God everywhere present and
always operating in and with natural causes, and the efficiency
of the Holy Ghost in the regeneration and sanctification of the
soul.^
The Dominicans and Franciscans became, and long continued the
two most powerful orders of monks in the Roman Church. As
they wei'e antagonistic on so many other points, they were also
opposed in doctrine. The Dominicans, as the disciples of Thomas
Aquinas, were called Thomists, and the Franciscans, as followers
of Duns Scotus, were called Scotists. The opposition between
these parties, among other doctrinal points, embraced as we have
seen, that of original sin. The Thomists were inclined to moderate
Augustinianism, the Scotists to Semi-Pelagianism. All the theories
however above mentioned, variously modified, had their zealous
advocates in the Latin Church, when the Council of Trent was
assembled to determine authoritatively the true doctrine and to
erect a barrier to the increasing power of the Reformation.
Tridentine Doctrine on Original Sin.
The Council of Trent had a very difficult task to perform. In
the first place, it was necessary to condemn the doctrines of the Re-
formers. But the Protestants, as well Lutheran as Reformed, had
proclaimed their adherence to the Augustinian system in its purity
and fulness ; and that system had received the sanction of coun-
cils and popes and could not be directly impugned. This difficult}''
was surmounted by grossly misrepresenting the Protestant doc-
trine, and making it appear inconsistent with the doctrine of Au-
gustine. This method has been persevered in to the present day.
Moehler in his " Symbolik " represents the doctrine of the Protes-
tants, and especially that of Luther, on original sin, as a form of
Manicheism. The other, and more serious difficulty, was the great
diversity of opinion existing in the Church and in the Council it-
self. Some were Augustinians ; some held that original sin con-
1 Ritter'a Geschichle der chnstlichen Philosophie, vol. iv. pp. 354-472.
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 175
sisted simply in the want of original righteousness, but that that
want is sin. Others admitted no original sin, but the imputation
of Adam's first transgression. Others, with the Dominicans, in-
sisted that the disorder of all the powers consequent on the loss of
original righteousness, i. e., concupiscence, is truly and properly
sin. This the Franciscans denied. Under these circumstances
the pontifical legates, who attended the Council, exhorted the assem-
bled fatiiers, that they should decide nothing as to the nature of
original sin, reminding them that they were not called together to
teach doctrines, but to condemn errors.^ This advice the Council
endeavoured to follow, and hence its decisions are expressed in very
general terms.
1. The Synod pronounces an anathema on those who do not
confess that Adam, when he transgressed in paradise the command-
ment of God, did immediately lose the holiness and righteousness
in which he had been constituted (constitutus fuerat^ ov po situs
eraf) ; and that by that offence he incurred the wrath and indigna-
tion of God, and thus also death and subjection to him who has
the power of death, that is, the devil ; and that the whole Adam
by the offence of his transgression was as to the body and the soul,
changed for the worst.
The effects of Adam's first sin upon himself therefore was :
(1.) The loss of original righteousness. (2.) Death and captivity
to Satan. (3.) The deterioration of his whole nature both soul
and body.
2. The Synod also anathematizes those who say that the sin of
Adam injured himself only, and not his posterity ; or that he lost
the holiness and righteousness which he received from God, for
himself only and not also for us, or that he transmitted to the
whole human race only death and corjioreal pains (^poenas cor-
poris^, and not sin, which is the death of the soul.
It is here taught that the effects of Adam's sin upon his poster-
ity are : (1.) The loss of original righteousness. (2.) Death
and the miseries of this life ; and (3.) Sin, or spiritual death
Qpeccatum, quod est mors animoe). This is a distinct condemna-
tion of Pelagianism, and the clear assertion of original sin, as
something transmitted to all men. The nature of that sin, how-
ever, is not further stated than that it is the death of the soul,
which may be differently explained.
3. Those also are condemned who say that this sin of Adam,
which is conveyed to all (omnibus transfusum), and inheres in
1 Moehler's SymboUk, 6th edition, p. 57.
176 PART II. Ch. vm. — sin.
every one as his own sin (inest unicuique propriurn), can be re-
moved bj the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy
than the merit of our one Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, who
hath reconciled us to God by his blood, and who is made unto us
righteousness, sanctlfication, and redemption.
It is here asserted: (1.) That original sin is conveyed by propa-
gation and not, as the Pelagians say, by imitation. (2.) That it
belongs to every man and inhex-es in him. (3.) That it cannot be
removed by any other means tlian the blood of Christ.
4. The Synod condemns all wlio teach that new-born children
should not be baptized ; or, that although baptized for the remission
of sins, they derive nothing of original sin from Adam, whicli
needs to be expiated in the laver of regeneration in order to attain
eternal life, so that baptism, in their case, would not be true but
false. Children, therefore, who cannot liave committed sin, in
their own persons, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, that
what they had contracted in generation, may be purged away in
r<?generation.
From this it appears that according to the Council of Trent there
is sin in new-born infants which needs to be remitted and washed
away by regeneration.
5. The fifth canon asserts that through the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remit-
ted, and everything is removed which has the true and proper natui-e
of sin. It is admitted that concupiscence (yel fomes) remains in
the baptized, against Avhich believers are to contend, but it is de-
clared that this concupiscence, although sometimes (as is admitted)
called sin by the Apostle, is not truly and properly sin in the re-
generated.
This is all that the Council teaches under the caption of original
sin, except to say that they do not intend their decisions to apply
to the Virgin Mary. Whether she was the subject of original sin,
as the Dominicans, after Thomas Aquinas, maintained, or whether
she was immaculately conceived, as zealously asserted by the Fran-
ciscans after Duns Scotus, the Synod leav^es undecided.
In the sixth session when treating of justification (i. e., regen-
eration and sanctification), the Council decides several points, which
20 to determine the A'iew its members took of the nature of orio;inal
sin. In the canons adopted in that session, it is among other
things, declared : (1.) That men cannot without divine grace
through Jesus Christ, by their own works, i. e., works performed
in their own strength, be justified before God. (2.) That grace
§6.] DOCTKINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 177
is not given simply to render good works more easy. (3.) That
men cannot believe, hope, love, or repent so as to secure regen-
erating grace without the preventing grace of God (^sine prce-
venienti Spiritus inspiratione, atque ejus adjutorio'). (4.) Men
can cooperate with this preventing grace, can assent to, or reject
it. (5.) Men have not lost their liberum arhitrium, ability to
good or evil by the fall. (6.) AH works done before regeneration
are not sinful.
From all this it appears that while the Council of Trent rejected
the Pelagian doctrine of man's plenary ability since the fall, and
the Semi-Pelagian doctrine that men can begin the work of refor-
mation and conversion ; it no less clearly condemns the Augustin-
ian doctrine of the entire inability of man to do anything spiritually
good, wliereby he may prepare or dispose himself for conversion,
or merit the regenerating grace of God.
The True Doctrine of the Church of Rome.
What was the true doctrine of the Church of Rome as to origi-
nal sin, remained as much in doubt after the decisions of this Coun-
cil as it had been before. Each party interpreted its canons accord-
ing to their own views. The Synod declares that all men are born
infected with original sin ; but whether that sin consisted simply in
the guilt of Adam's first sin ; or in the want of original righteous-
ness ; or in concupiscence, is left undecided. And therefore all
these views continued to be maintained by the theologians of the
Romish Church. The older Protestants generally regarded the
canons of the Council of Trent as designed to obscure the subject,
and held that the real Doctrine of the Church involved the denial of
any original sin in the sense of sin, subjective or inherent. In this
view, many, if not the majority of modern theologians concur.
Winer (in his " Comparative Darstellung,") Guericke (in his
" Symbolik "), Koellner (in his " Symbolik "), Baur (in his ^' An-
swer to Moehler"), and Dr. Shedd, in his " History of Christian
Doctrine," all represent the Church of Rome as teaching that orig-
inal sin is merely negative, the want of original righteousness, and
as denying that there is anything subjective in the state of human
nature as men are born into the world, which has the proper
nature of sin. The reasons which favour this view of the subject,
are, —
1. The prevailing doctrine of the schoolmen and of the Romish
theologians as to the nature of sin. According to Protestants,
" Quidquid a norma justitise in Deo dissidet, et cum ea pugnat,
VOL. II. 12
178 PART II. Cn. YIII. — SIN.
habet rationem peccati." ^ To this the Romanists oppose from
Andradius tlie definition : " Quod nihil liabeat rationem peccati
nisi fiat a volente et sciente." If this be so, tlien it is impossible
that there should be any inherent or innate sin. As infants are
not " knowing and willing," in the sense of moral agents, they can-
not have sin. Bcllarmin ^ says: " Non satis est ad culpam, ut
aliquid sit voluntarium habituali voluntate, sed requiritur, ut pro-
cesserit ab actu etiam voluntario : Alioqui voluntarium illud, hab-
ituale voluntate, naturale esset, et misericordia non reprehensione
dignum." He says, that if a man were created in purls yiatural-
ibus, without grace, and with this opposition of the flesh to the rea-
son, he would not be a sinner. With the loss of original righteous-
ness there is unavoidably connected this rebellion of the lower
against the higher nature of man. With the loss of the bias of the
will toward God, is of necessity connected aversion to God. This
obliquity of the will which attends original sin, is not sin in itself,
yet it is sin in us. For Bellarmin says, there is a " perversio vol-
untatis et obliquitas unicuique inhaerens, per quam peccatores pro-
prie et formaliter dicimur, cum primum homines esse incipimus."
This certainly appears contradictory. The perversion of the will,
or concupiscence, consequent on the loss of original righteousness,
is not itself sinful. Nevertheless, it constitutes us properly and
formally sinners, as soon as we begin to exist. Nothing is of the
nature of sin but voluntary action, or what proceeds from it, and
yet infants are sinners from their birth. He attempts to reconcile
these contradictions by saying: " Peccatum in Adamo actuale et
personale in nobis originaliter dicitur. Solus enim ipse actuali
voluntate illud commisit, nobis vero communicatur per genera-
tionem eo modo, quo communicari potest id, quod transiit, nimirum
per imputationem. Omnibus enim imputatur, qui ex Adamo nas-
cuntur, quonlam omnes in lumbis Adami existentes in eo et per
eum peccavimus, cum ipse peccavit." That is, the voluntary act
of Adam was at the same time the act of the will of ail his de-
scendants. Thus original sin is sin in us, although nothing is sin in
any creature which does not consist in an act of his own will, or
which does not flow from such act. To this, however, Baur prop-
erly remarks : " What is an act of a non-existing will, an act to
which the nature of sin is attributed, although it lies entirely out-
side of the individual consciousness ? Can any meaning be attached
to such a representation ? Does it not destroy the idea of guilt and
1 Chemnitz, Examen ConcilU Tridentini, i. iv. edit. Frankfort, 1674, p. 116.
2 De Amissione Gratia et Statu Peccati, v. xviii., Disputationes, vol. iv. p. 333, d.
§6.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. 179
sin, that it is imputed only because it is tz'ansmitted<n ordinary gen-
eration ? " 1 If a man or a church hold a theory of the nature of
sin which is incompatible with the doctrine of original sin, it is
argued, the existence of any such sin is thereby denied. (2.) An-
other reason urged in favour of the position that the Church of
Rome denies original sin, is drawn from what that Church teaches
of original ricrhteousness. If orlcrinal rio-hteousness be a supernat-
ural gift not belonging to the integrity of man's nature, its loss
leaves him in the state in which he came from the hands of his
Maker. And that state cannot be sinful unless God be the author
of sin. Even Bellarmin, who contends for original sin, in a cer-
tain sense, still says that man since the fall is in the same state
that Adam was as he was created. " Non magis differt status hom-
inis post lapsum Adee a statu ejusdem in puris naturalibus, quam
differat spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si
culpam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmi-
tate laborat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita.
Proinde corruptio naturae non ex alicujus doni naturalis carentia,
neque ex alicujus malae qualitatis accessu, sed ex sola doni super-
naturalis ob Adse peccatum amissione profluxit.^ (3.) The Coun-
cil of Trent expressly declares that concupiscence in the baptized,
i. e., the regenerated, is not of the nature of sin. Then it cannot
be in the unbaptized ; for its nature is not changed by baptism.
On the other hand, however, it may be urged, (1.) That the
Council of Trent expressly declares against the Pelagian doctrine,
that Adam's sin injured only himself, and asserts that our whole
nature, soul, and body, was thereby changed for the worse. (2.)
They assert that we derived from Adam not merely a mortal
nature, but sin which is the death of the soul. (3.) That new-born
infants need baptism for the remission of sin, and that what is re-
moved in the baptism of infants, veram et propriam peccati rationem
habet. (4.) The Roman Catechism teaches ^ that " we are born
in sin," that we are oppressed with corrupticm of nature (naturce
vitio premimur) and,* that we nihil simus, nisi putida caro ; that
the virus of sin penetrates to the very bones, i. e., ratioiiem, et
voluntatem, quce maxime solidce sunt animce partes. This last
passage does not refer ex})ressly to original sin, but to the state of
men generallv as sinners. Nevertheless, it indicates the view
taken by the Roman Church as to the present condition of human
1 KntftoUcismus tend Protestaniurnus, Tubingen, 1836 ; second edit. p. 92, notv.
2 De Gratia Primi Hominh, cap. v.; Dhputationes, edit. I'aris, 1608, vol. iv. p. 16, d, e.
3 P. iii. c. 10, qu. 4; Streitwolf, Libri Symbolici Ecchsia CathoHcce, vol. i. p. 579.
* V. iv. c. 1-i, qu. 5; /bid. pp. 675, 676.
180 PART 11. ch. vm. — sin.
nature. (5.) *Bellarinin, who is often quoted to prove that Ro-
manists make original sin merely the loss of original righteousness,
says : " Si privationem justitiae originalis ita velit esse effectum
peccati, ut non sit etiam ipsa vere proprieque peccatum, Concilio
Triclentino manifesto repugnat, neque distingui potest a sententia
Catharini " (who made original sin to consist solely in the imputa-
tion of Adam's first sin).
From all this it appears that although the doctrine of the Roman
Church is neither logical nor self-consistent, it is nevertheless true
that that Church does teach the doctrine of original sin, in the
sense of a sinful corruption of nature, or of innate, hereditary sin-
fulness. It is also to be observed that all parties in the Roman
Church, before and after the Council of Trent, however much
they differed in other points, united in teaching the imputation of
Adam's sin ; i. e., that for that sin the sentence of condemnation
passed upon all men.
§ 7. Protestant Doctrine of iSin.
The Protestant Churches at the time of the Reformation did not
attempt to determine the nature of sin philosophically. They re-
garded it neither as a necessary limitation ; nor as a negation of
being ; nor as the indispensable condition of virtue ; nor as having
its seat in man's sensuous nature ; nor as consisting in selfishness
alone ; nor as being, like pain, a mere state of consciousness, and
not an evil in the sight of God. Founding their doctrine on their
moral and religious consciousness and upon the Word of God, they
declared sin to be the transgression of, or want of conformity to
the divine law. In this definition all classes of theologians, Lu-
theran and Reformed, agree. According to Melancthon, " Pecca-
tum recte definitur avofXLa, sen discrepantia a lege Dei, h. e., defec-
tus naturas et actionum pugnans cum lege Dei, easdemque ex ordine
justitise divinae ad poenam obligans." Gerhard says : ^ " Peccatum "
seu " dvo/jLLa " est " aberratio a lege, sive non congruentia cum lege,
sive ea in ipsa natura hserat, sive in dictis, factis ac concupiscentiae
motibus, inveniatur." Baier says :^ " Carentia conformitatis cum
lege." Vitringa says : ^ " Forma peccati est disconvenientia actus,
habitus, aut status hominis cum divina lege."
It is included in these definitions, (1.) That sin is a specific
evil, differing from all other forms of evil. (2.) That sin stands
1 Loci Theohyici, xi. i. 3; edit. Tubingen, 1766, vol. v. p. 2, b.
2 Compendium Theologias, edit. Frankfort, 1739, p. 346.
8 Doclrina ChristianoB Religionis, x. 7 ; edit. Lyons, 1762, vol. ii. pp. 285, 286.
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 181
related to law. The two are correlative, so that where there is
no law, there can be no sin. (3.) That the law to which sin is
thus related, is not merely the law of reason, or of conscience, or
of expediency, but the law of God. (4.) That sin consists essen-
tially in the want of conformity on the pai't of a rational creature,
to the nature or law of God. (5.) That it includes guilt and
moral pollution.
Sin is a Specific Evil.
Sin is a specific evil. This we know from our own consciousness.
None but a sentient being can know what feeling; is. We can nei-
ther determine a priori what the nature of a sensation is, nor can
we convey the idea to any one destitute of the organs of sense.
Unless we had felt pain or pleasure, we should not be able to un-
derstand what those words mean. If born blind, we cannot know
light. If born deaf, we can have no idea of what hearing is.
None but a rational creature can know what is meant by folly.
Only creatures with an aesthetic nature can have the perception of
beauty or of deformity. In like manner only moral beings can
know what sin or holiness is. Knowledge in all these cases is
given immediately in the consciousness. It would be in vain to
attempt to determine a priori^ what pain, pleasure, sight, and hear-
ing are ; much less to prove that there are no such sensations ;
or that they do not differ from each other and from every other
form of our experience. Every man in virtue of his being a
moral creature, and because he is a sinner, has therefore in his
own consciousness the knowledge of sin. He knows that when he
is not what he ought to be, when he does what he ought not to do ;
or omits what he ought to do, he is chargeable with sin. He knows
that sin is not simply limitation of his nature ; not merely a sub-
jective state of his own mind, having no character in the sight of
God ; that it is not only something which is unwise, or derogatory
to his own dignity ; or simply inexpedient because hurtful to his
own interests, or injurious to the welfare of others. He knows
that it has a specific character of its own, and that it includes both
guilt and pollution.
Sin has Relation to Law.
A second truth included in our consciousness of sin is, that it has
relation to law. As moral and rational beings we are of necessity
subject to the law of right. This is included in the consciousness
of obligation. The word ought would otherwise have no meaning.
182 PART n. Ch. vin. — sin.
To say we ought, is to say we are bound ; tliat we are under au-
thority of some kind. The word law, in relation to moral and
religious subjects, is used iu two senses. First, it sometimes means
a controlling power, as when the Apostle says that he had a law in
his members warring against the law of his mind. Secondly, it
means, that which binds, a command of one in authority. This is
the common sense of the term in the New Testament. As the rule
which binds the conscience of men, and prescribes what they are
to do and not to do, has been variously revealed in the constitution
of our nature, in the Decalogue, in the Mosaic institutions, and in
the whole Scriptures, the word is sometimes used in a sense to
include all these forms of revelation ; sometimes in reference ex-
clusively to one of them, and sometimes exclusively in reference to
another. In all cases the general idea is retained. The law is
that which binds the conscience.
Sin is Related to the Laio of God.
The great question is. What is that law which prescribes to man
what he ought to be and to do? (1.) Some say it is our own
reason, or the higher powers of the soul. Those powers have the
prerogative to rule. Man is autonomic. He is responsible to him-
self. He is bound to subject his life, and especially his lower
powers, to his reason and conscience. Regard to his own dignity
is the comprehensive obligation under which he lies, and he fulfils
all his duties when he lives worthily of himself. To this theory it
is obvious to object, (a.) Tliat law is something outside of our-
selves and over us ; entirely independent of our will or reason.
We can neither make nor alter it. If our reason and conscience
are perverted, and determine that to be right which is in its nature
wrong, it does not alter the case. Tlie law remains unchanged in
its demands and in its autiiority. (S.) On this theory there could
be no sense of guilt. When a man acts against the dictates of his
reason, or in a manner derogatory to the dignity of his nature, he
may feel ashamed, or degraded, but not guilty. There can be no
conviction that he is amenable to justice, nor any of that fearful
looking for of judgment, which the Apostle says is inseparable from
the commission of sin. (2.) Others say the law is to be found in
the moral order of the universe, or in the eternal fitness of things.
These however are mere abstractions. They can impose no obli-
gation, and inflict no penalty on transgression. This theory again
leaves out of view, and entirely unaccounted for, some of the
plainest facts of the universal consciousness of men. (3.) Others
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 183
again say that an enlightened regard to the happiness of the
universe is the only law to which rational creatures are subject.
(4.) Others take a still lower view, and say that it is an enlightened
regard to our own happiness which alone has authority over men.
It is evident, however, that these theories deny the specific char-
acter of moral obligation. There is no such thing as sin, as dis-
tinguished from the unwise or the inexpedient. There can be no
sense of guilt, no responsibility to justice, except for violations of
rules of expediency. (5.) It is clear from the very constitution
of our nature that we are subject to the authority of a rational
and moral being, a Spirit, whom we know to be infinite, eternal,
and immutable in his being and perfections. All men, in every
age and in every part of the world, under all forms of religion,
and of every degree of culture, have felt and acknowledged that
they were subject to a personal being higher than themselves. No
forms of speculative philosophy, however plausible or however
widely diffused or confidently held in the schools or in the closet,
have ever availed to invalidate this instinctive or intuitive judg-
ment of the mind. Men ignorant of the true God have fashioned
for themselves imaginary gods, whose wrath they have deprecated
and whose fixvour they have endeavoured to propitiate. But when
the Scriptural idea of God, as an infinitely perfect personal Being,
has been once presented to the mind, it can never be discarded.
It commends itself to the reason and the conscience. It solves
all the enigmas of our nature. It satisfies all our desii'es and aspi-
rations : and to this Being, to him and to his will, we feel ourselves
bound to be conformed, and know ourselves to be responsible for
our character and conduct. This allegiance we cannot possibly
throw off. The law of gravitation no more inexorably binds the
earth to its orbit than our moral nature binds us to our allegiance
and responsibility to God. It would be as unreasonable to deny
the one as the other, and as useless to argue against the one as
against the other. This is clearly the doctrine of the Apostle in
the passage just referred to. He was speaking of the most de-
based and vicious of the heathen world, men whom God had given
I up to a reprobate mind ; and yet he asserts that they not only knew
God, but knew his righteous judgment ; that they who commit
sin were worthy of death ; that is, that they were rightfully sub-
ject to the authority, and inevitably exposed to the wrath and
indignation, of a moral ruler. This is a fact therefore given in the
universal consciousness of men. Sin is related to law, and that
law is not one of our own enacting, it is not a mei'e idea or ab-
184 PART n. Ch. Vni. - SIN.
straction, it is not mere truth or reason, or the fitness of things,
but the nature and will of God. Law, as it reveals itself in the
conscience, implies a law-giver, a being of whose will it is the
expression, and who has the power and the purpose to enforce all
its demands. And not onlj this, but one who, from the very per-
fection of his nature, must enforce them. He can no more pass
bj transgression than he can love evil. It is in vain to argue
against these convictions. It is in vain to say, There is no God,
no Being on whom we are dependent, and to whom we are respon-
sible for our character and conduct.
The Extent of the Law's Demands.
The next question is, What does this law demand ? This is the
point on which there has been most diversity of opinion, and sys-
tems of theology as well as of morals are founded on the different
answers which it has received. The answer given by the unso-
phisticated and enlightened conscience of men, and by the word
of God, is that the law demands complete perfection, or the entire
conformity of the moral nature and conduct of a rational creature
with the nature and will of God. We are commanded to love
God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the strength, and
with all the mind, and our neighbour as ourselves. This implies
entire congeniality with God ; the unreserved consecration of all
our powers to his service, and absolute submission to his will.
Nothing more than this can be required of any creature. No
angel or glorified saint can be or do more than this, and this is
what the law demands of every rational creature, at all times, and
in every state of his being. In one sense this obligation is limited
by the capacity (not the ability, in the modern theological sense of
that term) of the creature. The capacity of a child is less than
that of an adult Christian or of an angel. He can know less. He
can contain less. He is on a lower stage of being. But it is the
absolute moral perfection of the child, of the adult, or of the angel
that the law demands. And this perfection includes the entire
absence of all sin, and the entire conformity of nature to the image
and will of God. As this is the doctrine of the Bible, so also it is
the teaching of conscience. Every man, at least every Christian,
feels that he sins or is sinful whenever and howsoever he comes
short of full conformity to the image of God. He feels that lan-
guor, coldness of affection, defect of zeal, and the want of due
humility, gratitude, meekness, forbearance, and benevolence are in
him of the nature of sin. The old maxim, omne minus bonum
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 185
Jiahet rationem mali, authenticates itself in the conscience of every
unsoj)histical believer. This was the doctrine of Augustine,
who in his letter to Jerome,^ says : " Plenissima (caritas) quce jam
non possit augeri, quamdiu hie homo vivit, est in nemine ; quamdiu
autem augeri potest, profecto illud, quod minus est quani debet, ex
vitio est." The Lutheran and Reformed theologians assert the
same principle.^ If this pi'inciple be correct, if the law demands
entii'e conformity to the nature and will of God, it follows; —
1. That there can be no perfection in this life. Every form of
perfectionism which has ever prevailed in the Church is founded
either on the assumption that the law does not demand entire free-
dom from moral evil, or upon the denial that anything is of the
nature of sin, but acts of the will. But if the law is so extensive in
its demands as to pi'onounce all defect in any duty, all coming
short in the purity, ardour, or constancy of holy affections, sinful,
then there is an end to the presumption that any mere man since
the fall has ever attained perfection.
2. It follows also from this principle that there can never be any
merit of good works attributable to men in this world. By merit,
according to the Scriptural sense of that word, is meant the claim
upon reward as a matter of justice, founded on the complete sat-
isfaction of the demands of the law. But if those demands never
have been perfectly fulfilled by any fallen man, no such man can
either be justified for his works, or have, as the Apostle expresses
it, any Kav'^^/xa, any claim founded on merit in the sight of God.
He must always depend on mercy and expect eternal life as a free
gift of God.
3. Still more obviously does it follow from the principle in ques-
tion that there can be no such thing as works of supererogation. If
no man in this life can perfectly keep the commandments of God, it
is very plain that no man can do more than the law demands. The
Romanists regard the law as a series of specific enactments. Besides
these commands which bind all men there are certain things which
they call precepts, which are not thus universally binding, such as
celibacy, poverty, and monastic obedience, and the like. These go
beyond the law. By adding to the fulfilment of the commands of
God, the observance of these precepts, a man may do more than
is required of him, and thus acquire an amount of merit greater
than he needs for himself, and which in virtue of the communion
1 Ephtvla, CLXvii. iv. 15; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. ii. p. 897, a.
2 See Ciiemnitz, Exainen ConciUi Trifkntini, I. De Justificalione, edit. Frankfort, 1674,
p. 165, f. Be Bonis Oferibus, qu. 3, p. 205, a. Gerliard, Loci Theoloyici, xi. x. 42-45, v.,
pp. 21-24 Quenstodt, Thejloyia, P. ii. cap. ii. § 2, q. 3, edit Leipzig, 1715, p. 967.
186 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
of saints, belongs to the Church, and may be dispensed, through
the power of tlie keys, for the benefit of others. The whole foun-
dation of this theory is of course removed, if the law demands
absolute perfection, to which, even according to their doctrine, no
man ever attains in this life. He always is burdened with venial
sins, which God in mercy does not impute as real sins, but which
nevertheless are imperfections.
Sin not Confined to Acts of the Will.
4. Another conclusion drawn from the Scriptural doctrine as to
the extent of the divine law, as held by all Augustinians, is that sin
is not confined to acts of the will. There are three senses in which
the word voluntary is used in connection with this subject. The
first and strictest sense makes nothing an act of the will but an act
of deliberate self-determination, something that is performed, sciente
et volente. Secondly, all spontaneous, impulsive exercises of the
feelings and affections are in a sense voluntary. And, thirdly,
whatever inheres in the will as a habit or disposition, is called
voluntary as belonging to the will. The doctrine of the Romish
Church on these points, as shown in the preceding section, is a
matter of dispute among Romanists thfemselves. The majority of
the schoolmen and of the Roman theologians deny that anything
is of the nature of sin, but voluntary acts in the first sense of the
word voluntary above mentioned. How they endeavour to reconcile
tlie doctrine of hereditary, inherent corruption, or original sin, with
that principle has already been stated. Holding that principle,
however, they strenuously deny that mere impulses, the motus
primo primi, as they are called, of evil dispositions are of the nature
of sin. To this doctrine they are forced by their view of baptism.
In that ordinance, according to their theory, everything of the
nature of sin is removed. But concupiscence with its motions
remains. These, however, if not deliberately assented to and in-
dulged, are not sinful. Whether they are or not, of course depends
on the extent of the law. Nothing is sinful but what is contrary
to the divine law. If that law demands perfect conformity to the
image of God, then these impulses of evil are clearly sinful. But
if the law takes cognizance only of deliberate acts they are not.
The Protestant doctrine which pronounces these impulsive acts to
be of the nature of sin is confirmed by the consciousness of the
believer. He recognizes as evil in their owu nature the first risings
of malice, envy, pi'ide, or cupidity. He knows that they spring
from an evil or imperfectly sanctified nature. They constitute part
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 187
of the burden of corruption whicli he hopes to lay down in the
grave ; and he knows tliat as he shall be free from them in heaven,
they never disturbed the perfectly holy soul of his blessed Lord, to
whose image he is even now bound to be conformed.
5. It follows from the principle that the law condemns all want of
conformity to the nature of God, that it condemns evil dispositions
or habits, as well as all voluntary sins, whether deliberate or impul-
sive. According to the Bible and the dictates of conscience there
is a sinfulness as well as sins; there is such a thing as character as
distinguished from transient acts by which it is revealed ; that is,
a sinful state, abiding, inherent, immanent forms of evil, which are
truly and properly of the nature of sin. All sin, therefore, is not
an agency, activity, or act ; it may be and is also a condition or
state of the mind. This distinction between habitual and actual
sin has been recognized and admitted in the Church from the
beginning. Our Lord teaches us this distinction when He speaks
of an evil heart as distinguished from evil exercises, which are as
distinct as a tree and its fruits. The Apostle speaks of sin as a law,
or controlling principle regulating or determining his acts even in
despite of his better nature. He says sin dwells in him. He com-
plains of it as a burden too heavy to be borne, from which he groans
to be delivered. And his experience in this matter is the experience
(we do not say the theory) of all the people of God. They know
there is more in them of the nature of sin than mere acts and exer-
cises ; that their heart is not rio;ht in the sio;ht of God ; that the
fountain from which the waters flow is itself bitter ; that the tree
is known by its fruits.
Sin is Want of Conformity to the Law of Crod.
Protestants teach not only that sin is a specific evil, that it has
relation to law, that that law is the nature and will of God, and
that it takes cognizance of and condemns all forms and degrees of
moral evil or want of moral excellence, but also that the formal na-
ture of sin is the want of conformity to the divine law or standard of
.excellence. This want of conformity is not a mere negation, such
las may be predicated of a stone or of a brute, of whom it may be
said they are not conformed to the image of God. The want of
conformity to the divine law which constitutes sin is the want of
[congeniality of one moral nature with another; of the dependent
and created nature with the infinitely holy nature, whicli of neces-
sity is not only the sum but the standard of all excellence. Herein
is sin that we are not like God. As the opposite of reason is
188 PART 11. ch. vni. — sm.
unreason, the opposite of wisdom is folly, and the opposite of good
is evil ; so the opposite of the divine holiness is sin. It matters
not of what exercises or states in the nature of a moral beino; this
opposition may be predicated ; of deliberate acts, of merely impulsive
acts, or of dispositions or habits ; if opposed to the divine nature it
is sin, hateful in itself and worthy of condemnation. There is a
positive element, therefore, in all sin. That is, it is not merely the
privation of righteousness, but it is positive unrighteousness. Be-
cause the absence of the one in a moral nature is the other. The
want of congeniality with God is alienation from God, and, as the
Scriptures say, enmity towards Him. The Protestant symbols and
theologians, therefore, in defining sin, not merely as selfishness or
the love of the creature or the love of the world, which are only
modes of its manifestation, but as the want of conformity of an act,
habit, or state of a man with the divine law, which is the revelation
of the divine nature, have in their support both reason and con-
science. This doctrine of the nature of sin is fully sustained by
the authority of Scripture. The Apostle John says that all want
of conformity to law is sin. The two ideas d^xaprta and avofila
are coextensive. Whatever is the one, is the other. It seems that
some in the Apostle's day were disposed to limit the demands of
the divine law, and regard certain things not specifically forbidden
as lawful. In opposition to this, the Apostle tells them that every-
thing evil is unlawful ; for the very nature of evil is want of con-
formity to law : ttSs o ttolwv rrjv dfiapTLav koI tt/v avojjiiav Trotei, he who
commits sin commits anomia, for rj a/xaprCa ia-rlv rj dro/i,ia, for all want
of conformity to law is sin. (1 John iii. 4.) With this agree also
all the representations of Scripture. The words there used for sin
in all its forms, express the idea of non-conformity to a standard.
And besides this the Bible everywhere teaches that God is the
source and standard of all good. His favour is the life of the soul.
Congeniality with Him, conformity to his will and nature, is the
idea and perfection of all excellence ; and the opposite state, the
want of this congeniality and conformity, is the sum and essence of
all evil.
Sin includes Gruilt and Pollution.
Sin includes guilt and pollution ; the one expresses its relation to
the justice, the other to the holiness of God. These two elements
of sin are revealed in the conscience of every siimer. He knows
himself to be amenable to the justice of God and offensive in his
holy eyes. He is to himself even, hateful and degraded and self
condemned. There are, however, two things included in guilt.
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTEINE. 189
The one we express by the words criminality, demerit, and blamewor-
thiness ; the other is the obligation to suffer the punishment due to
our offences. These are evidently distinct, although expressed by
the same word. The guilt of our sins is said to have been laid upon
Christ, that is, the obligation to satisfy the demands of justice on
account of them. But He did not assume the criminality, the
demerit, or blameworthiness of our transgressions. When the
believer is justified, his guilt, but not his demerit, is removed. He
remains in fact, and in his own eyes, the same unworthy, hell-
deserving creature, in himself considered, that he was before. A
man condemned at a human tribunal for any offence against the
community, when he has endured the penalty which the law pre-
scribes, is no less unworthy, his demerit as much exists as it did
from the beginning ; but his liability to justice or obligation to the
penalty of the law, in other words, his guilt in that sense of the
word, is removed. It would be unjust to punish him a second time
for that offence. This distinction theologians are accustomed to
express by the terms reatus culpce and reatun poence. Culpa is
(strafwiirdiger Zustand) blameworthiness ; and reatus culpce is
guilt in the form of inherent ill-desert. Whereas the reatus pcence
is the debt we owe to justice. That guilt, in the comprehensive
sense of the word, and pollution enter into the nature of sin, or are
inseparable from it, is not only revealed in our own consciousness,
but is everywhere assumed in Scripture. The Bible constantly
declares that sin and all sin, everything which bears its nature, is
not only hateful in the sight of a holy God, but is the object of his
wrath and indignation, the just ground for the infliction of punish-
ment.
This is admitted, and cannot be denied. The only question is.
What is necessary in order to the sense of guilt as it exists in the
conscience ? Or, What is required to constitute anything a just
ground of punishment in the sight of God ? Is it sufficient that the
thing itself should be sinful ? Or, Is it necessary that it should be
due to our own voluntary act ? This latter ground is taken not
only by Pelagians, and by all who define sin to be the voluntary
transgression of known law, but also by many who hold to habitual,
as distinguished from actual sin, and who even acknowledge that
men are born in sin. They still insist that even evil innate, inherent
sin, must be referrible to our own voluntary agency, or it cannot
be guilt in us. But this is, —
1. Contrary to our own consciousness. The existence of sin in
the heart, the presence of evil dispositions, without regard to their
190 PART II. Ch. VIIL — sin.
origin, is unavoidably attended by a sense of pollution and guilt.
These dispositions being evil in their own nature must include
whatever is essential to that nature. And, as has been acknowl-
edged, guilt is essential to the nature of sin. Nothing is sinful
which does not involve guilt. The consciousness, or the convic-
tion of sin, must therefore include the conviction of guilt. And
consequently if we are convinced from the declarations of Scripture
and from the state of our mxture that we are born in sin we must
be convinced that guilt attaches to innate corruption of nature.
Besides this, habitual or indwelling sin is not voluntary in tlie sense
of being designed or intended, or in the sense of being under the
power of the will, and yet all Christians admit that such indwelling
sin is a dreadful load of guilt ; a load more burdensome to the
heart and conscience than all our actual transsressions.
2. The principle in question is no less opposed to the common
judgments of men. All men instinctively judge a man for what
he is. If he is good they so regard him. If he is bad, they pro-
nounce him to be bad. This judgment is just as inevitable or
necessary as that he is tall or short, learned or unlearned. The
question as to the origin of the man's character does not enter into
the grounds of this judgment. If born good, if he made himself
good, or if he received his goodness as a gift from God, does not
materially affect the case. He is good, and must be so regarded
and treated. In like manner all that is necessary in order to
justify and necessitate the judgment that a man is bad is that he
should be so. This is the principle on which we judge ourselves,
and on which men universally judge each other. The principle,
therefore, must be sound.
3. The doctrine that sin in order to include guilt must be refer-
rible to our own voluntary action, is contrary to analogy. It is
not so with holiness. Adam was created holy. His holiness as
truly constituted his character as though it had been self-acquired,
and had it been retained, it would have continued to be, and so
long as it was retained it was an object of complacency and the
ground of reward in the sight of God. Habitual grace, as it is
called, or the new principle of spiritual life, imparted to the soul in
regeneration, is not self-produced. It is due to the supernatural
power of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless it constitutes the believer's
character. The only reason wliy it is not meritorious, is that it is
so imperfect, and because it cannot cancel the debt we already owe
to the justice of God. The soul, however, if perfectly sanctified
by the Holy Ghost is just as pure, just as much an object of ap-
probation and delight in the sight of God as an unfallen angel.
§ 7.] PROTESTANT DOCTRINE. 191
4. The doctrine in question contradicts the faith of the Chiircli
Universal. A distinction must be made between the faith of
the Church and the speculations (or even the doctrines) of theo-
logians. These are often divergent. The former is determined by
the Scriptures and the inward teachings of the Spirit ; the latter
are greatly modified by the current philosophy of the age in which
those theologians lived, and by the idiosyncrasies of their own
minds. During the Middle Ages, for example, the speculations of
the schoolmen and the faith of the Church, had very little in com-
mon. The faith of the Church is to be found in its creeds, prayers,
and forms of devotion generally. In all these, through every age,
the Church has shown that she regards all men as burdened with
original sin, as belonging to a polluted and guilty race, polluted and
guilty from the first moment of existence. It cannot be said that
the Church believed original sin to be due to the agency of each
individual man, or to the act of generic humanity. These are
thoughts foreign to the minds of common believers. The convic-
tion therefore must have existed in the Church always and every-
where that guilt may be present which does not attach to the vol-
untary agency of the guilty. Infants have always been baptized
for the remission of sin, and men have ever been regarded by the
Church as born in sin.
5. The explanation given of the undeniable fact of innate pollu-
tion and guilt, by those who admit the fiict, and yet maintain that
this original sin is referrible to our own agency, is altogether unsat-
isfactory. That explanation is that we acted thousands of years
before we existed, that is, that the substance which constitutes our
individual souls, committed, in the person of Adam, the sin of dis-
obeying God in paradise. This explanation of course presupposes
the fact to be explained. The fact remains whatever becomes of
the explanation. Men are born in a state of guilt and pollution.
^AIl that follows from the rejection of the explanation is, that sin
may exist, which is not referrible to the voluntary agency of those
in whom it inheres. This consequence is far easier of admission, in
the judgment of the vast majority of men, than the doctrine that
w^e are personally chargeable with eating the forbidden fruit as our
own act.
6. The Bible in everywhere teaching that men are born in sin,
that they come into the world the children of wrath, does thereby
teach that there can be, and that there is sin (pollution and guilt)
which is inherited and derived, which is inherent and innate, and
therefore not referrible to our own agency. As the Scriptures no-
192 PART n. Ch. vin. — sin.
where teach that we actually sinned before we existed, they assert
the foct which enters into the common faith of the Church, that
guilt attaches to all sin however tiiat sin originates.
§ 8. The Effects of Adam's Sin upon his Posterity.
That the sin of Adam injured not himself only but also all de-
scending from him by ordinary generation, is part of the faith of
the whole Christian world. The nature and extent of the evil
thus entailed upon his race, and the ground or reason of the de-
scendants of Adam being involved in the evil consequences of his
transgression, have ever been matter of diversity and discussion.
As to both of these points the common Augustinian doctrine is
briefly stated in the Symbols of our Church. According to our
standards, " the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell consists
in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness,
and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called
original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed
from it." This corruption of nature is in the Confession of Faith
declared to be " both in itself and in all motions thereof, truly and
properly sin." And in virtue of this original corruption men are
utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and
wholly inclined to all evil. As to the ground of these evils, we
are taught that " the covenant being made with Adam not only for
himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by
ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first
transgression." Or, as it is expressed in the Confession, " Our first
parents, being the root of all mankind, the guilt of their sin was
imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature were con-
veyed to all their posterity, descending fi'om them by ordinary gen-
eration."
In this view of the relation of mankind to Adam, and of the
consequences of his apostasy, the three leading subjects included,
are the imputation of Adam's first sin ; the corruption of nature
derived from him ; and the inability of fallen man to any spiritual
good.
§ 9. Immediate Imputation.
It being admitted that the race of man participates in the evil
consequences of the fall of our first parent, that fact is accounted
for on different theories.
1. That which is adopted by Protestants generally, as well
Lutherans as Reformed, and also by the great body of the Latin
Church is, that in virtue of the union, federal and natural, between
I
§9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 193
Adam and his posterity, his sin, although not their act, is so im-
puted to them that it is the judicial ground of the penalty threat-
ened against him coming also upon them. This is the doctrine of
immediate imputation.
2. Others, while they admit that a corrupt nature is dei'ived from
Adam by all his ordinary posterity, yet deny, first, that this cor-
ruption or spiritual death is a penal infliction for his sin ; and sec-
ond, that there is any imputation to Adam's descendants of the
guilt of his first sin. All that is really imputed to them is their
own inherent, hereditary depravity. This is the doctrine of
mediate imputation.
3. Others discard entirely the idea of imputation, so far as
Adam's sin, is concerned, and refer the hereditary corruption of
men to the general law of propagation. Throughout the vegeta-
ble and animal kingdoms, like begets like. Man is not an excep-
tion to that law. Adam havino; lost his original righteousness and
corrupted his nature by his apostasy, transmits that despoiled and
deteriorated nature to all his descendants. To what extent man's
nature is injured by the fall, is left undetermined by this theory.
According to some it is so deteriorated as to be in tlie true Scriptural
sense of the term, spiritually dead, while according to others, the in-
jury is little if anything more than a physical infirmity, an impaired
constitution which the first parent has transmitted to his children.
4. Others again adopt the realistic theory, and teach that as
generic humanity existed whole and entire in the persons of Adam
and Eve, their sin was the sin of the entire race. The same
numerical rational and voluntary substance which acted in our first
parents, having been communicated to us, their act was as truly
and properly our act, being the act of our reason and will, as it
was their act. It is imputed to us therefore not as his, but as our
own. We literally sinned in Adam, and consequently the guilt of
that sin is our personal guilt and the consequent corniption of na-
ture is the effect of our own voluntary act.
5. Others, finally, deny any causal relation, whether logical or
natural, whether judicial or physical, between the sin of Adam
and the sinfulness of his race. Some who take this ground say
that it was a divine constitution, that, if Adam sinned, all men
should sin. The one event was connected with the other only in
the divine purpose. Others say that there is no necessity to ac-
count for the fact that all men are sinners, further than by referring
to their liberty of will. Adam sinned, and other men sin. That
is all. The one fact is as easily accounted for as the other.
VOL. II. 13
194 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
Statement of the Doctrine of Immediate Imputation.
The first of the above mentioned doctrines is that presented in
the Symbols of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, and by the
great body of the theologians of those great historical branches of
the Protestant community.^ What that doctrine is may be stated
in few words. To impute is simply to attribute to, as we are said
to impute good or bad motives to any one. In the juridical and
theological sense of the word, to impute is to attribute anything to
a person or persons, upon adequate grounds, as the judicial or
meritorious reason of reward or punishment, i. e., of the bestow-
ment of good or the infliction of evil. The most elaborate discus-
sion of the Hebrew word 2.wn and the Greek XoyCtfliLaL^ used in
Scripture in relation to this subject, gives nothing beyond the sim-
ple result above mentioned.
1. To impute is to reckon to, or to lay to one's account. So far
as the meaning of the word is concerned, it makes no difference
whether the thing imputed be sin or righteousness ; whether it is
our own personally, or the sin or righteousness of another.
2. To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, is to
impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not criminality or
moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral pollution, but the
judicial obligation to satisfy justice. Hence the evil consequent on
the imputation is not an arbitrary infliction ; not merely a misfor-
tune or calamity ; not a chastisement in the proper sense of that
word, but a punishment, i. e., an evil inflicted in execution of the
penalty of law and for the satisfaction of justice.
3. A third remark in elucidation of what is meant by the impu-
tation of Adam's sin is, that by all theologians. Reformed and
Lutheran, it is admitted, that in the imputation of Adam's sin to
us, of our sins to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to believers,
the nature of imputation is the same, so that the one case illustrates
the others. When it is said that our sins were imputed to Christ,
or that He bore our sins, it is not meant that he actually committed
our sins, or that He was morally criminal on account of them, or
that the demerit of them rested upon Him. All that is meant is
1 As at the time of the Reformation an influential party in the Komish Church held,
after some of the schoolmen, that original sin consists solely in the imputation of Adam's first
sin, and as the Confessions of the Reformers were designed not only as an exhibition of
the truth but as a protest against the errors of the Church of Rome, it will be observed that
the Protestants frequently assert that original sin is not only tiie imputation of Adam's sin
hut also hereditary corruption of nature ; and the Reformed theologians often made the lat-
ter more prominent than the former, because the one was admitted by their adversaries, but
the other denied.
I
§ 9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 195
that He assumed, in the language of the older theologians, " our
law-place." He undertook to answer the demands of justice for the
sins of men, or, as it is expressed by the Apostle, to be made a
curse for them. In like manner, when it is said that the righteous-
ness of Christ is imputed to believers, it does not mean that they
wrought out that righteousness, that they were the agents of the
acts of Christ in obeying the law ; nor that the merit of his righ-
teousness is their personal merit ; nor that it constitutes their moral
character ; it simply means that his righteousness, having been
wrought out by Christ for the benefit of his people, in their name,
by Him as their representative, it is laid to their account, so
that God can be just in justifying the ungodly. Much of the
difficulty on this subject arises from the ambiguity of language.
The words righteous and unrighteous have two distinct mean-
ings. Sometimes they express moral character. A righteous
man is an upright or good man. At other times, these words
do not express moral character, but simply relation to justice. In
this sense a righteous man is one with regard to whom the demands
of justice are satisfied. He may be personally unrighteous (or
ungodly) and legally righteous. If this were not so, no sinner
could be saved. There is not a believer on earth who does not
feel and acknowledge himself to be personally unrighteous, ill-de-
serving, meriting the wrath and curse of God. Nevertheless he
rejoices in the assurance that the infinitely meritorious righteous-
ness of Christ, his full atonement for all sin, constitutes Him legally,
not morally, righteous in the sight of divine justice. When,
therefore, God pronounces the unrighteous to be righteous, He
does not declare them to be what they are not. He simply de-
clares that their debt to justice has been paid by another. And
when it is said that the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity, it
is not meant that they committed his sin, or were the agents of his
act, nor is it meant that they are morally criminal for his trans-
gression ; that it is for them the ground of remorse and self-
reproach ; but simply that in virtue of the union between him
and his descendants, his sin is the judicial ground of the condem-
nation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the
judicial ground of the justification of his people. So much for
the statement of the question.
It is no less a doctrine of Scripture than a fact of experience
that mankind are a fallen race. Men universally, under all the
circumstances of their being in this world, are sinful, and exposed
to innumerable evils. Many of these, and that in many instances,
196 PART n. ch. vni. — sin.
the most appalling, come upon the children of men in early infancy,
anterior to any possible transgressions of their own. Tliis is a fact
which cannot be denied ; and for which the human mind has tortured
itself to find a solution. The Scriptural solution of this fearful
problem is, that God constituted our first parent the federal head
and representative of his race, and placed him on probation not
only for himself, but also for all his posterity. Had he retained
his integrity, he and all his descendants would have been con-
firmed in a state of holiness and happiness forever. As he fell
from the estate in which he was created, they fell with him in his
first transgression, so that the penalty of that sin came upon them
as well as upon him. Men therefore stood their probation in
Adam. As he sinned, his posterity come into the world in a state
of sin and condemnation. They are by nature the children of
wrath. The evils which they suffer are not arbitrary impositions,
nor simply the natural consequences of his apostasy, but judicial
inflictions. The loss of original righteousness, and death spiritual
and temporal under which they commence their existence, are the
penalty of Adam's first sin. We do not say that this solution of
the problem of man's sinfulness and misery, is without its difficul-
ties ; for the ways of God are past finding out. But it may be
confidently asserted, first, that it is the Scriptural solution of that
problem ; and secondly, that it is far more satisfactory to the rea-
son, the heart, and the conscience, than any other solution which
the ingenuity of man has ever suggested. This is proved by its
general acceptance in the Christian Church.
The Ground of the Imputation of Adam's Sin.
The ground of the imputation of Adam's sin, or the reason why
the penalty of his sin has come upon all his posterity, according to
the doctrine above stated, is the union between us and Adam.
There could of course be no propriety in imputing the sin of one
man to another unless there were some connection between them
to explain and justify such imputation. The Scriptures never
speak of the imputation of the sins of angels either to men or to
Christ, or of his righteousness to them ; because there is no such
relation between men and angels, or between angels and Christ, as
to involve the one in the judicial consequences of the sin or right-
eousness of the other. The union between Adam and his poster-
ity which is the ground of the imputation of his sin to them, is
both natural and federal. He was their natural head. Such is
the relation between parent and child, not only in the case of
§9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 197
Adam and his descendants, but in all other cases, that the charac-
ter and conduct of the one, of necessity to a greater or less degree
affect the other. No fact in history is plainer than that children
bear the iniquities of their fathers. They suffer for their sins.
There must be a reason for this ; and a reason founded in the very
constitution of our nature. But there was something peculiar in
the case of Adam. Over and beyond this natural relation which
exists between a man and his posterity, there was a special divine
constitution by which he was appointed the head and representative
of his whole race.
Adam the Federal Head of Ms Race.
1. The first argument, therefore, in favour of the doctrine of
imputation is that the Scriptures present Adam as not only the
natural, but also the federal head of his posterity. This is plain,
as already remarked, from the narrative given in Genesis. Every-
thing there said to Adam was said to him in his representative
capacity. The promise of life was for him and for his seed after
him. The dominion with which he was invested, belonged to his
posterity as well as to himself. All the evils threatened against
him in case of transgression, included them, and have in fact come
upon them. They are mortal ; they have to earn their bread by
the sweat of their brows ; they are subject to all the inconvenien-
ces and sufferings arising from the banishment of our first parents
from paradise and from the curse pronounced for man's sake upon
the earth. They no less obviously are born into the world desti-
tute of original righteousness and subject to spiritual death. The
full penalty, therefore, threatened against Adam, has been inflicted
upon them. It was death with the promise of redemption. Now
that these evils are penal in our case as well as in his, is plain, be-
cause punishment is suffering inflicted in execution of a threaten-
ing, and for the satisfaction of justice. It matters not what that
suffering may be. Its character as penalty depends not on its na-
ture, but upon the design of its infliction. One man, as before
remarked, may be shut up in a prison to protect him from popular
violence ; another, in execution of a legal sentence. In one case
the imprisonment is a favour, in the other, it is a punishment. As
therefore, the evils which men suffer on account of the sin of
Adam, are inflicted in execution of the penalty threatened against
him, they are as truly penal in our case as they were in his ; and
he was consequently treated as the federal head and representa-
tive of his race. Besides the plain assumption of the truth of this
198 PART n. ch. vm. — sm.
federal relation, it is expressly asserted in the Word of God. The
parallel drawn by the Apostle between Adam and Christ relates
precisely to this point. Adam was the type of Him who was to
come, because as the one was the representative of his race, so the
other is the representative of his people. And the consequences
of the relation are shown to be in like manner analogous. It was
because Adam was the representative of his race, that his sin is the
judicial ground of their condemnation ; and it is because Christ is
the representative of his people, that his righteousness is the judi-
cial ground of the justification of believers.
The Representative Principle in the Scriptures.
2. This representative principle pervades the whole Scriptures.
The imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity is not an isolated
fact. It is only an illustration of a general principle which charac-
terizes the dispensations of God from the beginning of the world.
God declared himself to Moses to be, " The Lord, the Lord God,
merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and
truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgres-
sion, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's chil-
dren unto the third and to the fourth generation." (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7.)
Jeremiah says : " Thou showest loving-kindness unto thousands,
and recompensest the iniquities of the fathers into tlie bosom of
their children after them. The Great, the Mighty God, the Lord
of Hosts, is his name." (Jer. xxxii. 18.) The curse pronounced
on Canaan fell upon his posterity. Esau's selling his birthright,
shut out his descendants from the covenant of promise. The chil-
dren of Moab and Ammon were excluded from tlie congregation
of the Lord forever, because their ancestors opposed the Israelites
when they came out of Egypt. In the case of Dathan and Abiram,
as in that of Achan, " their wives, and their sons, and their little
children " perished for the sins of their parents. God said to Eli,
that the iniquity of his house should not be purged wnth sacrifice
and offering forever. To David it was said, " The sword shall
never depart from thy house ; because thou hast despised me, and
hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hlttite to be thy wife." To the
disobedient Gehazi it was said : " The leprosy of Naaman shall
cleave unto thee and unto thy seed forever." The sin of Jere-
boam and of the men of his generation determined the destiny of
the ten tribes for all time. The imprecation of the Jews, when
they demanded the crucifixion of Christ, " His blood be on us and
§9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 199
on our children," still weighs down the scattered people of Israel.
Our Lord himself said to the Jews of his generation that they
built the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had slain,
and thus acknowledged themselves to be the children of murderers,
and that therefore the blood of those prophets should be required
at their hands. This principle runs through the whole Scriptures.
When God entered into covenant with Abraham, it was not for
himself only but also for his posterity. They were bound by all
the stipulations of that covenant. They shared its promises and
its threatenings, and in hundreds of cases the penalty of disobe-
dience came upon those who had no personal part in the transgres-
sions. Cliildren suffered equally with adults in the judgments,
whether famine, pestilence, or war, which came upon the people
for their sins. In like manner, when God renewed and enlarged
the Abrahamic covenant at Mount Sinai, it was made with the
adults of that generation as representing their descendants to the
remotest generations. And the Jews to this day are suffering the
penalty of the sins of their fathers for their rejection of Him of
whom Moses and the prophets spoke. The whole plan of redemp-
tion rests on this same principle. Christ is the representative of
his people, and on this ground their sins are imputed to Him and
his righteousness to them. In like manner, in the baptismal cov-
enant, the parent acts for the child, and binds him without the
child's consent, and the destiny of the child is, as a general rule,
suspended on the fidelity of the parent. No man who believes
the Bible, can shut his eyes to the fact that it everywhere recog-
nizes the representative character of parents, and that the dispen-
sations of God have from the beginning been founded on the prin-
ciple that children bear the iniquities of their fathers. This is one
of the reasons which infidels assign for rejecting the divine origin
of the Scriptures. But infidelity furnishes no relief. History is
as full of this doctrine as the Bible is. The punishment of the
felon involves his family in his disgrace and misery. The spend-
thrift and drunkard entail poverty and wretchedness upon all con-
nected with them. There is no nation now existing on the face of
the earth, whose condition for weal or woe is not largely detei'-
mined by the character and conduct of their ancestors. If, unable
to solve the mysteries of Providence, we plunge into Atheism, we
only increase a thousand fold the darkness by which we are sur-
rounded. It is easier to believe that all things are guided by infin-
ite reason and goodness, and are certain to result in the hio-hest
glory of God, and in the highest blessedness of the universe, than
200 PART n. ch. vin. — sm.
to believe that this vast aggregate of sin and misery is the working
of blind force without purpose and without end.
If the fact be admitted that we bear the consequences of Adam's
sin, and that children suffer for the iniquities of their fathers, it
may be said that this is not to be referred to the justice of God, but
to the undesigned working of a general law, which in despite of
incidental evil, is on the whole beneficent. The difficulty on that
assumption instead of being lessened, is only increased. On either
theory the nature and the degree of suffering are the same. The
innocence of the sufferers is the same. The only difference relates
to the question, Why they suffer for offences of which they are not
personally guilty ? The Bible says these sufferings are judicial ;
they are inflicted as punishment for the support of law. Others
say, they are merely natural consequences, or arbitrary inflictions
of a sovereign. If a king should put the children of a rebel to
death, would it relieve his conduct from reproach to say that it was
an act of arbitrary sovereignty ? If the prevention of crime be one
important end of punishment (although not its primary end),
would it not be a relief to say, that the death of the children was
designed to prevent other parents from rebelling ? That the
execution of the children of a criminal by a human sovereign would
be a cruel and unjust punishment, may be admitted, while it is,
and must be denied, that it is unjust in God that He should visit
the iniquities of the fathers upon their children. In the first place
no human sovereign has the right over his subjects which belongs
to God over his creatures as their Creator. And in the second
place, no human sovereign has the power and wisdom to secure
the highest good from the penalties which he attaches to the viola-
tions of law. We cannot infer that because a course of action would
be wrong in man, therefore it must be unjust in God. No man
could rightfully send pestilence or famine through a land, but God
does send such visitations not only righteously, but to the mani-
festation of his own glory and to the good of his creatures.
The same Principle involved in other Doctrines.
That the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity is proved not
only (1.) From the fact that he was their natural head and rep-
resentative ; and (2.) From the fact that this principle of repre-
sentation pervades the Scriptures ; and (3.) From the fact that it
is the ground on which the providence of God is administered ;
and (4.) From the fact that evils consequent on the apostasy of
Adam are expressly declared in Scripture to be penal inflictions ;
§9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 201
but also (5.) From the fact that the principle of imputation is in-
volved in other great doctrines of the Bible. The assumption that
one man cannot righteously, under the government of God, be
punished for the sins of another, is not only contrary, as we have
seen to the express declarations of Scripture and to the administra-
tion of the divine government from the beginning, but it is subver-
sive of the doctrines of atonement and justification. The idea of
the transfer of guilt or of vicarious punishment lies at the founda-
tion of all the expiatory offerings under the Old Testament, and
of the great atonement under the new dispensation. To bear sin,
is in Scriptural language to bear the penalty of sin. The victim
bore the sin of the offerer. Hands were imposed upon the head
of the animal about to be slaughtered, to express the transfer of
guilt. That animal must be free from all defect or blemish to
make it the more apparent that its blood was shed not for its own
deficiencies but for the sin of another. All this was symbolical and
typical. There could be no real transfer of guilt made to an irra-
tional animal, and no real atonement made by its blood. But these
services were significant. They were intended to teach these
great truths: (1.) That the penalty of sin was death. (2.) That
sin could not be pardoned without an atonement. (3.) That
atonement consists in vicarious punishment. The innocent takes
the place of the guilty and bears the penalty in his stead. This is
the idea attached to expiatory offerings in all ages and among all
nations. This is the idea inculcated in every part of the Bible.
And this is what the Scriptures teach concerning the atonement
of Christ. He bore our sins ; He was made a curse for us ; He
suffered the penalty of the law in our stead. All this proceeds on
the ground that the sins of one man can be justly, on some ade-
quate ground, imputed to another. In justification the same radi-
cal idea is included. Justification is not a subjective change in the
moral state of the sinner ; it is not mei'e pardon ; it is not simply
pardon and restoration to favour, as when a rebel is forgiven and
restored to the enjoyment of his civil rights. It is a declaration that
the demands of justice have been satisfied. It proceeds on the
assumption that the righteousness which the law requires belongs
either personally and inherently, or by imputation, to the person
who is justified, or declared to be just. There is a logical con-
nection, therefore, between the denial of the imputation of Adam's
sin, and the denial of the Scriptural doctrines of atonement and
justification. The objections urged against the former bear equally
against the latter doctrines. And it is a matter of Iiistory that
those who reject the one, reject also the others.
202 PART n. Ch. VIII. — sin.
Argument from Romans v. 12—21.
The Apostle in Romans v. 12-21 teaches this doctrine in the
most formal and explicit manner. The design of that passage is to
ilhistrate the method of salvation. The Apostle had taught that
all men are sinners, and the Aviiole world guilty before God. All
men being under the condemnation of the law, it is impossible that
thev should be justified by the law. The same law cannot both just-
ify and condemn the same persons. As therefore no flesh can be
justified by the works of the law, God sent his Son for our salvation.
He assumed our nature, took our place, and obeyed and suffered
in our stead, and thus wrought out for us a perfect and infinitely
meritorious rigliteousness. On the ground of that righteousness,
God can now be just in justifying the ungodly, if, renouncing their
own righteousness, they receive and trust upon this righteousness
of God, freely offered to them in the Gospel. The fundamental
doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans, as it is the fundamental
doctrine of the Gospel, is, therefore, that the righteousness of one
man, even Christ, can be and is so imputed to believers as to be
the meritorious ground of their justification at the bar of God. To
make this doctrine the more plain to his readers, the Apostle refers
to the analogous case of the condemnation of the human race for
the sin of Adam ; and shows that as the sin of Adam is the judi-
cial ground of the condemnation of all who were in him, i. e., ot
all represented by him, so tiie obedience of Christ is the judicial
ground of the justification of all who are in Him. In the prose-
cution of his plan he first asserts the imputation of Adam's sin to
his posterity. He then proves it. He then comments upon it.
He then applies it ; and finally draws inferences from it. Thus
in every possible way, as it would seem, he sets forth tlie doctrine
as part of the revelation of God. The assertion of the doctrine is
contained in the twelfth verse of the chapter. It was by one man,
he says, that sin and death passed upon all men ; because all siimed.
They sinned through, or in, that one man. His sin was the sin of
all in virtue of the union between them and him. The proof of
this doctrine is contained in verses thirteen and fourteen. The
Apostle argues thus : Punishment supposes sin ; sin supposes law ;
for sin is not imputed where there is no law. All men are pun-
ished; they are all subject to penal evils. They are, therefore, all
chargeable with sin, and consequently are all guilty of violation of
law. That law cannot be the law of Moses, for men died Qi. e.,
were subject to the penalty of the law) before that law was given.
§•9.] IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION. 203
It cannot be the law as written on the heart ; for those die who
liave never committed any personal sin. There are penal evils,
therefore, which come upon all mankind prior to anything in their
state or conduct to merit such infliction. The ground of that in-
fliction must therefore be sought out of themselves, i. e., in the sin
of their first parent. Hence Adam is the type of Christ. As the
one is the head and representative of his race, so the other is the
head and representative of his people. As the sin of the one is the
ground of the condemnation of his posterity, so the righteousness
of the other is the ground of the justification of all who are in him.
But although there is this grand analogy between the fall and the
redemption of man, there are nevertheless certain points of differ-
ence, all in favour of the scheme of redemption. If we die for the
offence of one man, much more shall grace abound unto many
through one man. If for one offence the sentence of condemnation
passed on all, the free justification is from many offences. If con-
demned for a sin in which we had no personal and voluntary par-
ticipation, how much more shall we live on account of a righteous-
ness, which we cordially receive. Wherefore, continues the
Apostle, in the application of his illustration, if all men (in union
with Adam) are condemned by the offence of one man, so also
all (in union with Christ) shall be justified on the ground of the
righteousness of one man. As one man's disobedience constituted
us sinners, so the obedience of one man constitutes us righteous,
(verses 18 and 19). From these premises the Apostle draws two
conclusions : First, that the law was not designed for justification,
but tliat sin might abound in the knowledge and consciousness of
men ; and secondly, that where sin hath abounded grace shall much
more abound. The benefits and blessings of i-edemption shall far
exceed all the evils of the apostasy.
Whatever may be thouglit of the details of this exposition, there
can hardly be a doubt that it expresses the main idea of the pas-
sage. Few can doubt, and few ever have doubted, that the Apostle
does here clearly teach that the sin of Adam is the judicial ground
of the condemnation of his race. With this agrees not only, as
we have already seen, the Scriptural account of the fall, but also
what the Apostle teaches in 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. " For since by
man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
Union with Adam is the cause of death ; union with Christ is the
cause of life.
204 PART II. Ch. vm. — sin.
Argument from General Consent.
The imputation of Adam's sin has been the doctrine of the
Church universal in all ages. It was the doctrine of the Jews,
derived from the plain teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures,
[t was and is the doctrine of the Greek, Latin, Lutheran, and
Reformed churches. Its denial is a novelty. It is only since the
rise of Arminianism that any considerable body of Christians have
ventured to set themselves in opposition to a doctrine so clearly
taught in the Bible, and sustained by so many facts of history and
experience. The points of diversity in reference to this subject do
not relate to the fact that Adam's sin is imputed to his posterity,
but either to the grounds of that imputation or to its consequences.
In the Greek Church the lowest views prevalent among Christians
were adopted. The theologians of that church generally held that
natural death, and a deterioration of our nature, and a change for
the Avorse in the whole state of the world, were the only penal evils
which the race of mankind suffer on account of Adam's sin. In the
Latin Church during the Middle Ages, as we have already seen,
great diversity of opinion obtained as to the nature and extent of
the evils brought upon the world by the apostasy of our first parent.
The Council of Trent declared those evils to be death, the loss of
original righteousness, and sin which is pronounced to be the death
of the soul. The Lutherans and Reformed held the same doctrine
with more consistency and earnestness. But in all this diversity
it was universally admitted, first, that certain evils are inflicted
upon all mankind on account of Adam's sin ; and, secondly, that
those evils are penal. Men were universally, so far as the Church
is concerned, held to bear in a greater or less degree the punishment
of the sin of their first parent.
Objections to the Doctrine.
The great objection to this doctrine, that it is manifestly unjust
that one man should be punished for the sin of another, has already
been incidentally referred to. What is punishment? It is evil or
suffering inflicted in support of law. Wherein is the injustice that
one man should, on the ground of the union between them, be
punished for the sin of another ? If there be injustice in the case
it must be in the infliction of suffering anterior to or irrespective
of personal ill-desert. It does not consist in the motive of that
infliction. The infliction of suffering to gratify malice or revenge is
of coiu-se a crime. To inflict It in mere caprice Is no less obviously
§ 10.] MEDIATE IMPUTATION. 205
wrong. To inflict it for the attainment of some right and desirable
end may be not only just but benevolent. Is not the support of
the divine law such an end ? The fact that all mankind do suffer
on account of Adam's sin no believer in the Bible can or does deny.
It cannot be denied that these sufferings were designed. They are
included in the threatenings made in the beginning. They were
expressly declared to be penal in the Bible. The sentence of
condemnation is said to have passed on all men for the offence of
one man. A part of the penalty threatened against sin in the great
progenitor of the race was that his posterity should suffer the con-
sequences of his transgression. They do thus suffer. It is vain,
therefore, to deny the fact, and no relief is obtained by denying
that those sufferings are inflicted in execution of the penalty of the
law and for the infinitely important object of sustaining its authority.
§ 10. Mediate Imputation.
About the middle of the seventeenth century Amyraut, Cappel,
and La Place (or Placaeus), three distinguished professors in the
French theological school at Saumur, introduced several modifica-
tions of the Augustinian or Reformed doctrine on the decrees,
election, the atonement, and the imputation of Adam's sin. La
Place taught that we derive a corrupt nature from Adam, and
that that corrupt nature, and not Adam's sin, is the ground of the
condemnation which has come upon all mankind. When it was
objected to this statement of the case that it left out of view the
guilt of Adam's first sin, he answered that he did not deny the
imputation of that sin, but simply made it dependent on our partici-
pation of his corrupted nature. We are inherently depraved, and
therefore we are involved in the guilt of Adam's sin. There is no
direct or immediate imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, but
only an indirect or mediate imputation of it, founded on the fact
that we share his moral character. These views were first presented
by La Place in a disputation, "De statu hominis lapsi ante gratiam,"
published in the " Theses Salmurienses," and afterwards more
elaborately in a treatise, " De imputatione primi peccati Adami."
This doctrine was formally condemned by the National Synod of
France in 1644-45 ; ^ by the Swiss churches in the " Formula Con-
sensus ; " and by the theologians of Holland. Jaeger, a Lutheran
divine, in his " Ecclesiastical History," '^ is justified in saying,
" Contra doctrinam Placgei — tota Gallia reformata, quin et Theologi
1 See Quick's Synodicon, Loudon, 1692.
2 Tom. i. lib. ix. cap. v.
206 PART n. Ch. viil — sin.
reformati in HollandiS, surrexere." The decree of the French
Synod of Charenton on this snbject is as follows: "Cum relatum
esset ad Synodum, scripta qusedam .... prodisse, quae totam
rationem peccati originalis sola corruptione hsereditaria in omnibus
hominibus inhaerente definiunt, et primi peccati Adami imputationem
negant : Damnavit Synodus doctrinam ejusmodi, quatenus peccati
originalis naturam ad corruptionem haereditariam posterum Adas
ita restringit, ut imputationem excludat primi illius peccati, quo
lapsus est Adam : Adeoque censuris omnibus ecclesiasticis subjicien-
dos censuit pastores, professores, et quoscunque alios, qui in hujus
quaestionis disceptatione a communi sententia recesserit Ecclesiarum
Protestantium, quae omnes hactenus et corruptionem illam, et impu-
tationem banc in omnes Adami posteros descendentem agnoverunt."
It was to evade the force of this decision that Placaeus proposed
the distinction between mediate and immediate imputation. He
said he did not deny the imputation of Adam's sin, but only that it
preceded the view of hereditary corruption. But this is the very
thing which the Synod asserted. Hereditary corruption, or spiritual
death is the penalty, or, as expressed by the Lutheran confessions,
by Calvin, and by the Protestants generally, it was an evil inflicted
by " the just judgment of God, on account of Adam's sin (propter
peccatum Adami)." The Formula Consensus Ecclesiarum Hel-
veticarum was set forth 1675, in opposition to the doctrine of
Amyraut on universal grace, to the doctrine of Placaeus on mediate
imputation, and to that of others concerning the active obedience
of Christ.^ In that Formula it is said : " Censemus igitur (i. e.,
because the covenant of works was made not only with Adam, but
also in him, with the whole human race) peccatum Adami omnibus
ejus posteris, judicio Dei arcano et justo, imputari. Testatur quippe
Apostolus 'in Adamo omnes peccasse : ' ' Unius hominis inobedientia
peccatores multos constitui ; ' et ' in eodem omnes mori.' Neque vero
ratio apparet, quemadmodum haereditaria corruptio, tanquam mors
spiritualis, in universum genus humanum justo Dei judicio cadere
possit, nisi ejusdem generis humani delictum aliquod, mortis illius
reatum inducens, praecesserit. Cum Deus justissimus totius terrae
judex nonnisi sontem puniat." ^
Rivet, one of the professors of the University of Leyden, published
a treatise in support of the decision of the French Synod, entitled
" Decretum Synodi Nationalis Ecclesiarum Reformatarum Galliae
initio anni 1645, de Imputatione primi Peccati omnibus Adami pos-
1 Niemeyer's Colleelio Confeasionum, p. Ixxxi.
2 Art. X. ; Niemeyer, p. 733.
§ 10.] MEDIATE IMPUTATION. 207
ten's, cum Ecclesiarum et Doctorum Protestantium consensu, ex
scriptis eorum ab Andrea Riveto collecto." This treatise is con-
tained in the third volume of the folio edition of his works. His
colleagues in the University published their formal indorsement of
his work, and earnestly commended it as an antidote to the new
doctrine of Placaaus. The theologians of the other universities of
Holland joined in this condemnation of the doctrine of mediate im-
putation. They call it the evprj/xa Imputationis Mediatae a " ficuJne-
um nuditatis indecentis tegumentum," and insist that the imputation
of Adam's sin is no more founded on our inherent corruption than
the imputation of Christ's righteousness is founded on our inherent
holiness. "Quomodo et justitiaChristi electis imputatur, non mediate
per renovationem et obedientiam horum propriam, sed immediate,
ad quam haec ipsa propria eorum obedientia demum subsequitur." ^
These two great doctrines were regarded as inseparably united.
The Protestant theologians agree in holding that " Imputatio
justitiae Christi et culpae Adami pari passu ambulant, et vel utraque
ruit, vel utraque agnosci debet."'''
Mediate Imputation outside of the French Church.
Although the doctrine of mediate imputation was thus generally
condemned both by the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, it found
some distinguished advocates beyond the pale of the French Church.
The younger Vitringa, Venema, and Stapfer, in his " Polemical
Theology," gave it their sanction. From the last named author it
was adopted by President Edwards, in one chapter of his work on
" Original Sin." It appears there, however, merely as an excres-
cence. It was not adopted into his system so as to qualify his
theological views on other doctrines. Although President Edwards
does clearly commit himself to the doctrine of Placgeus, as he says,^
" that the evil disposition is first, and the charge of guilt conse-
quent,'' nevertheless he expressly teaches the doctrine of imme-
diate imputation formally and at length in other portions of that
work. (1.) He argues through a whole section to prove the
federal headship of Adam. (2.) He holds that the threatening
of death made to Adam included the loss of oricrinal righteousness
and spiritual death, (o.) That that threatening included his pos-
terity, and that the evils which they suffer in consequence of his
sin are truly penal. If this be so, if the loss of original righteous-
1 De Jloor, Commentnrius in Mavch'd Compendium, cap. xv. § 32, vol. iii. p. 280.
2 Ibid, vol iii. p. 25.5.
8 Original Sin, iv. iii.; Works, edit. N". Y. 1829, vol. ii. p. 544.
208 PART II. Ch. VIII.— sin.
ness and inherent depravity are penal, they suppose antecedent
guilt. That is, a guilt antecedent, and not consequent to the exist-
ence and view of the depravity. (4.) In his exposition of Rom.
V. 12-21, he expressly teaches the common doctrine, and says, " As
this place in general is very full and plain, so the doctrine of
the corruption of nature, as derived from Adam, and also the im-
putation of his first sin, are both clearly taught in it. The impu-
tation of Adam's one transgression, is indeed most directly and
frequently asserted. We are here assured that by one man's sin
death passed on all; all being adjudged to this punishment as having
sinned (so it is implied) in that one man's sin. And it is repeated,
over and over, that all are condemned, many are dead, many made
sinners, etc., by one man's offence, by the disobedience of one, and
by one offence." ^ As guilt precedes punishment, if, as Edwards
says, depravity or spiritual death is a punishment, then the impu-
tation of the guilt of Adam's first sin precedes depravity, and is
not consequent upon it. This is the current representation through-
out the work on Original Sin. It is only when in answer to the
objection that it is unjust that we should be punished for the sin
of Adam, that he enters on an abstruse metaphysical discussion on
the nature of oneness or identity, and tries to prove ^ that Adam
and his posterity are one, and not distinct agents. It is, therefore,
after all, realism, rather than mediate imputation, that Edwards for
the time adopted. Placaeus and his associates, in order to defend
the ground which they had taken, appealed to many passages in
the writings of earlier theologians which seemed to ignore the im-
mediate imputation of Adam's sin, and to place the condemnation
of the race mainly, if not exclusively, upon the hereditary depravity
derived from our first parent. Such passages were easily to be
found, and they are easily accounted for without assuming, con-
trary to the clearest evidence, that the direct imputation of Adam's
sin was either doubted or denied. Before Arius arose with the
direct denial of the true divinity of Christ and of the doctrine of
the Trinity, the language of ecclesiastical writers was confused
and contradictory. In like manner, even in the Latin Church, and
in the writings of Augustine himself, much may be found, before
the rise of the Pelagian controversy, which it is hard to reconcile
with the Augustinian system. Augustine was obliged to publish
a volume of retractions, and in many cases where he had nothing
to retract, he found much to modify and .explain. It is not won-
derful, therefore, that before any one openly denied the doctrine
1 Original Sin, iii. i. ; Wm-ks, vol. ii. p. 512. 2 Jind. p. 546.
§ 10.] MEDIATE IMPUTATION". 209
of immediate imputation, and especially when the equally impor-
tant doctrine of hereditary depravity was openly rejected by an
influential party in the Romish Church, the Protestant theologians
should apparently ignore a doctrine which no one denied, and
devote their attention principally to the points which were then in
controversy. Rivet, however, clearly shows that although not ren-
dered prominent, the immediate imputation of Adam's sin was
universally assumed. This is plain from the fact that all the evil
consequences of Adam's apostasy, mortality, the loss of original
righteousness, corruption of nature or spiritual death, etc., etc.,
were of the nature of punishment. What the Reformers were
anxious to maintain was, that oi-iginal hereditary depravity (concu-
piscence, in the language of the Latin Church) was of the nature
of sin, and consequently that men do not perish eternally solely
propter peccatum alienum^ but also propter peccatuvi proprium.
This was specially the case with Calvin. In the Confession of
Faith which he drew up for the school in Geneva, it is said, " Sin-
guli nascuntur originali peccato infecti . . . et a Deo damnati, non
propter alienum delictum duntaxat, sed propter improbitatem, quae
intra eos est." And elsewhere he says : " Dicimus Deum justo
judicio nobis in Adamo maledixisse, ac voluisse nos ob illius pecca-
tum corruptos nasci, ut in Christo instauremur." Again : " Pec-
cavit unus, omnes ad pcenam trahuntur, neque id modo, sed ex
unius vitio, contagionem omnes contrahunt." Again : " Si qusra-
tur causa maledictionis, quae incumbit omnibus posteris Adse, dicitur
esse alienum peccatum, et cujusque proprium." To the same
effect, Beza says : ^ " Tria sunt quae hominem reum constituunt
coram Deo, (1.) Culpa promanans ex eo quod omnes peccavimus
in proto lapso (Rom. v, 12). (2.) Corruptio quae est paena istius
culpae, impositam tam Adamo, quam posteris. (3.) Peccata quae
perpetrant homines adulti." ^ Principal Cunningham ^ calls atten-
tion to the fact that the doctrine of immediate imputation of Adam's
sin is much more explicitly stated in the Westminster Larger and
Shorter Catechisms than in the Confession of Faith. This he
very naturally accounts for by the supposition that the denial of
that doctrine by Placaeus had not attracted attention in England
when the Confession was framed (1646), but did become known
before the Catechisms were completed.
1 Apolog. pro Jnstificaiione.
3 See Turrettin, locus ix. quaes. 9, and De Moor's Commentarius in Johannis Marchii Com,'
pendium, caput xxv. § 32, vol. iii. p. 260 jf., where an extended account of this controversy
may be found.
3 The Reformers and the Theology of (he Reformation, second edition, p. 383.
VOL. H. 14
210 PART II. Ch. VIIL— sin.
Objections to the Doctrine of 3Iediate Imputation.
Tlie leading objections against the doctrine of mediate imputa-
tion are, —
1. That it denies what the Scriptures assert. The Scriptures
assert that the sentence of condemnation has passed upon all men
for the sin of one man. This the doctrine of mediate imputation
denies, and affirms that the ground of that condemnation is inhe-
rent depravity. We are accounted partakers of Adam's sin only
because we derive a corrupt nature from him. According to the
Scriptures, however, the reason why we are depraved is, that we
are regarded as partakers of his sin, or because the guilt of that sin
is imputed to us. The guilt in the order of nature and fact precedes
the sj)iritual death which is its penal consequent.
2. This doctrine denies the penal character of the hereditary cor-
ruption in which all men are born. According to the Scriptures
and to the faith of the church universal, mortality, the loss of origi-
nal righteousness, and hereditary corruption are inflicted upon man-
kind in execution of the threatening made against Adam, and are
included in the comprehensive word, death, by which the threatened
penalty was expressed. This is as emphatically taught by Presi-
dent Edwards as by any other of the Reformed theologians. He
devotes a section of his work to prove that the death mentioned in
Genesis, and of which the Apostle speaks in Rom. v. 12, included
spiritual death, and that the posterity of Adam were included in
that penalty. He says : " The calamities which come upon them
in consequence of his sin, are brought on them as punishments." ^
He moreover says, it destroys the whole scope of the Ajjostle's
argument " to suppose that the death of which he here speaks as
coming on mankind by Adam's sin, comes not as a punishment."^
And again : "■ I do not suppose the natural depravity of the poster-
ity of Adam is owing to the course of nature only ; it is also owing
to the just judgment of God." ^ But punishment supposes guilt ; if
the loss of righteousness and the consequent corruption of nature
are piuiishments, they suppose the antecedent imputation of guilt ;
and therefore imputation is immediate and not mediate ; it is ante-
cedent and not consequent to or upon inherent depravity. The
view which the Reformed theologians uniformly present on this
subject is, that God constituted Adam the head and representative
of his race. The penalty attached to the covenant made with him,
1 Original Sin, ii. i. ; Works, vol. ii. p. 432. - Il>id. ii. iv. ul supra, p. i81.
8 Ibid. IV. ii. ul supra, p. 540.
§ 10.] MEDIATE IMPUTATION. 211
and which included his posterity, was the loss of the divine favour
and fellowship. The consequences of the forfeiture of the divine
favour in the case of Adam were, (1.) The loss of original right-
eousness ; (2.) The consequent corruption of his whole nature ;
and, (3.) Exposure to eternal death. These consequences come
on his posterity in the same order : first, the loss or rather destitu-
tion of original righteousness ; and secondly, corruption of nature ;
and thirdly, exposure to eternal death ; so that no child of Adam
is exposed to eternal death irrespective of his own personal sinful-
ness and ill-desert. On this point Turrettin says : " Poena quam
peccatum Adami in nos accersit, vel est privativa, vel positiva.
Prior est carentia et privatio justitiae originalis ; posterior est
mors turn temporalis, turn £eterna, et in genere mala omnia,
quae peccatoribus immittuntur. Etsi secunda necessario sequi-
tur primam ex natura rei, nisi intercedat Dei misericordia, non
debet tamen cum ea confundi. Quoad primam dicimus Adami
peccatum nobis imputari immediate ad poenam privativam, quia est
causa privationis justitise originalis, et sic corruptionem antecedere
debet saltem ordine naturae ; sed quoad posteriorem potest dici
imputari mediate quoad poenam positivam, quia isti poenje obnoxii
non sumus, nisi postquam nati et corrupti sumus." ^ Vogelsang''*
says : " Certe neminem sempiterna subire supplicia propter inobe-
dientiam protoplasti, nisi mediante cognata perversitate." And
Mark^ says that if Placaeus and others meant nothing more by
mediate imputation than that " hominum natorum actualem puni-
tionem ulteriorem non fieri nudo intuitur Adamicffi transwressionis
absque interveniente etiam propria corruptione et fluentibus hinc
sceleribus vai'iis, neminem orthodoxum possent habere obloquen-
tem." But he adds, they obviously meant much more. They
deny the imputation of the first sin of Adam as the cause of this
inherent corruption. As Adam by his apostasy became subject to
eternal death, but through the intervention of redeeming grace
was doubtless saved from it, so also although all his posterity
become liable to the same dreadful penalty through tlieir own
inher( nt corruption, yet we have every reason to believe and
hope that no human being ever actually perishes who does not
personally incur the penalty of the law by his actual transgres-
sion. Tliis however is through the redemption of Christ. All who
die in infancy are doubtless saved, but they are saved by grace. It
is nevertheless important that the real views of the Reformed
1 Loc. IX. qusest. ix. 14, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, p. 558.
2 Quoted by De Moor, Commentarius, vol. iii. p. 275. 8 Jhid. p. 278.
212 PART 11. Ch. VIIL — Sm.
Churches, on tlie doctrine of immediate imputation, should be
clearly understood. Those churches do not teach that the first
sin of Adam is the single and immediate ground of the condemna-
tion of his posterity to eternal death, but that it is the ground of
their forfeiture of the divine favour from which flows tlie loss of
original righteousness and corruption of our whole nature, wliich
in their turn become the proximate ground of exposure to final
perdition, from which, however, as almost all Protestants believe,
all are saved who have no other sins to answer for.
Mediate Imputation increases the Difficulties to he accounted for.
3. It is a further objection to the doctrine of mediate imputation
that it increases instead of relieving the difficulty of the case. It
denies that a covenant was made with Adam. It denies tliat man-
kind ever had a probation. It assumes that in virtue of a natui'al
law of propagation when Adam lost the image of God and became
sinful, his children inherit his character, and on the ground of that
character are subject to the wrath and curse of God. All the evils
therefore which the Scriptural and Church doctrine represent as
coming upon the posterity of Adam as the judicial punishment of
his first sin, the doctrine of mediate imputation represents as sov-
ereign inflictions, or mere natural consequences. What the Scrip-
tures declare to be a righteous judgment, Placaeus makes to be an
arbiti'ary dispensation.
Inconsistent with the ApostWs Argument in Rom. v. 12-21.
4. It is a still more serious objection that this doctrine destroys
the parallel between Adam and Christ on which the Apostle lays
so much stress in his Epistle to the Romans. The great point
which he there labours to teach and to illustrate, and which he
represents as a cardinal element of the method of salvation, is
that men are justified for a righteousness which is not personally
their own. To illustrate and confirm this great fundamental doc-
trine, he refers to the fact that men have been condemned for a sin
which is not personally their own. He over and over insists that
it was for the sin of Adam, and not for our own sin or sinfulness,
that the sentence of death (the forfeiture of the divine favour)
passed upon all men. It is on this ground he urges men the more
confidently to rely upon the promise of justification on the ground
of a righteousness which is not inherently ours. This parallel is
destroyed, the doctrine and argument of the Apostle- are over-
turned, if it be denied that the sin of Adam, as antecedent to any
§ 10.] MEDIATE IMPUTATION. 213
sin or sinfulness of our own is the ground of our condemnation. If
we are partakers of the penal consequences of Adam's sin only be-
cause of the corrupt nature derived by a law of nature from him,
then we are justified only on the ground 'of our own inherent holi-
ness derived by a law of grace from Christ. We have thus the
doctrine of subjective justification, which overthrows the great
doctrine of the Refoi'mation, and the great ground of the peace
and confidence of the people of God, namely, that a righteousness
not within us but wrought out for us, — the righteousness of an-
other, ev^n the eternal Son of God, and therefore an infinitely
meritorious righteousness, — is the ground of our justification be-
fore God. Any doctrine which tends to invalidate or to weaken
the Scriptux'al evidence of this fundamental article of our faith is
fraught with evil greater than belongs to it in itself considered.
This is the reason why the Reformed theologians so strenuously
opposed the doctrine of La Place. They saw and said that on his
principles the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness
antecedent to our santification could not be defended.
The Doctrine founded on a False Principle,
5. Perhaps, however, the most serious objection against the doc-
trine of mediate imputation is drawn from the principle on which it
rests, and the arguments of its advocates in its support. The great
principle insisted upon in support of this doctrine is that one man
cannot justly be punished for the sin of another. If this be so
then it is unjust in God to visit the iniquities of the fathers upon
their children. Then it was unjust in Christ to declare that the
blood of the prophets slain from the beginning should come upon
the men of his generation. Then it is unjust that the Jews of the
present day, and ever since the crucifixion of our Lord, should be
scattered and peeled, according to the predictions of the prophets,
for the rejection of the Messiah. Then, also, were the deluge sent
in wrath upon the world, and the destruction of Sodom and Go-
morrah, and the extermination of the Canaanites, in which thou-
sands of children perished innocent of the offences for which those
judgments were inflicted, all acts of stupendous injustice. If this
principle be sound, then the administration of the divine govern-
ment over the world, God's dealings with nations and with the
Church, admit of no defence. He has from the beginning and
through all time held children I'esponsible for the conduct of
parents, included them without their consent in the covenants
made with their fathei's, and visited upon them the consequences
214 PART II. •ch. vni. — sin.
of the violations of such covenants of which thej were not person-
ally guilty, as well as bestowed upon them rich blessings secured
by the fidelity of their progenitors without anything meritorious on
their part. Moreover, if the principle in question be valid, then
the wliole Scriptural doctrine of sacrifice and expiation is a delu-
sion. And then, also, we must adopt the Socinian theory which
makes the death of Christ instead of a penal satisfaction for sin,
a mere symbolical inculcation of a truth — a didactic and not an
expiatory service. The Reformed theologians of the seventeenth
century expressed their deep regret that men professing orthodoxy
should adopt from Pelagiaiiis et Pelagianizantibus, against the
doctrine of immediate imputation, " exceptiones " et " objectiones
.... petitas a Dei justitia et veritate, ab actus et personee Adam-
icae singularitate, ex sceleris longe ante nos praeterito tempore, ex
posterum nulla scientia vel consensione in illud, ex non imputatis
aliis omnibus factis et fatis Adami, etc.," which had so often been
answered in the controversies with the Socinians and Remon-
strants.^ It is very clear that if no such constitution can be right-
eously established between men, even by God, that one man may
justly bear the iniquity of another, then the Bible and Providence
become alike unintelligible, and the great doctrines of the Chris-
tian faith are overthrown.
The Theory of Propagation.
The theory of those who deny all imputation of Adam's sin to
his posterity, whether mediate or immediate, and who account for
the corruption of the race consequent on his apostasy, on the gen-
eral law of propagation, that like begets like, differs oidy in terms
from the doctrine of La Place. All he meant by mediate imputa-
tion was that the descendants of Adam, derived from him a corrupt
nature, have the same moral character, and therefore are adjudged
worthy of the same condemnation. This the advocates of the
tlieory just mentioned are willing to admit. Their doctrine there-
fore is liable to all the objections which bear against the doctrine
of mediate imputation, and therefore does not call forth a separate
consideration.
§ 11. Preexistence.
The principle that a man can be justly held responsible or re-
garded as guilty only for his own voluntary acts and for their
subjective consequences, is so plausible that to many minds it has
the authority of an intuitive truth. It is, however, so clearly the
1 De Moor, Commentarius inJohannis Marckii Compendium, vol. iii. p. 279.
§ 11.] PREEXISTENCE. 215
doctrine of the Bible and the testimony of experience that men
are born in sin, that they come into the world in a state of guilt
and of moral pollution, that a necessity arises of reconciling this
fact with what they regard as self-evidently true. Two theories
have been proposed to effect this reconciliation. The first is that
of preexistence. Origen, and after him, here and there one in
the history of the Church, down to the present day, assumed that
men existed in another state of being before their birth in this
world, and having voluntarily sinned against God in that previous
state of being, they come into this world burdened witli the guilt
and pollution due to their own voluntary act. This view of the
subject never having been adopted by any Christian church, it does
not properly belong to Christian theology. It is sufficient to re-
mark concerning it : —
1. That it does not pretend to be taught in the Scriptures, and
therefore cannot be an article of faith. Protestants unite in teach-
ino; that " The whole counsel of God, concerning all thinors neces-
sary for his own glory, and man's salvation, faith and life, is either
expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary conse-
quence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at any
time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or
the traditions of men." As the doctrine of the preexistence of
souls is neither expressly set down in the Bible, nor deducible from
it, as is admitted, it cannot be received as one of the formative
principles of Christian doctrine. All that its Christian advocates
claim is that it is not contradicted in Scripture, and therefore that
they are free to hold it.
2. But even this cannot be conceded. It is expressly contrary
to the plain teachings of the Word of God. According to the his-
tory of the creation, man was formed in the image of God. His
body was fashioned out of the dust of the earth, and his soul was
derived immediately from God, and was pronounced by him "very
good." This is utterly inconsistent with the idea that Adam was a
fallen spirit. The Bible also teaches that Adam was created in the
image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and fell
from that state here in this life, and not in a previous and higher
state of being. The Scriptures also, as we have seen, say that it
was by one man that sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
because all sinned in that one man. There is a causal relation be-
tween the sin of Adam and the condemnation and sinfulness of his
posterity. This contradicts the theory which refers the present
sinfulness of men, not to the act of Adam, but to the voluntar}^ act
of each individual man, in a previous state of existence.
216 PART n. Ch. VIII. — sin.
3. This doctrine Is as destitute of all support from the testimony
of consciousness as from the authority of Scripture. No man has
any reminiscences of a previous existence. There is nothing In
his present state which connects him with a former state of being.
It Is a simple, pure assumption, without the slightest evidence from
any known facts.
4. The theory. If true, affords no relief. Sins of which we know
nothing ; which were committed by us before we were born ; which
cannot be brought home to the conscience as our own sins, can
never be the righteous grounds of punishment, any more than the
acts of an idiot. It is unnecessary however to pursue this subject
further, as the objections against the realistic theory, In most In-
stances, bear with equal force against the theory of preexistence.
§ 12. Realistic Theory.
Those who reject the untenable doctrine of preexistence and yet
hold to the principle that guilt can attach only to what is due to
our agency, are driven to assume that Adam and his race are in
such a sense one, that his act of disobedience was literally the act
of all mankind. And consequently that they are as truly person-
ally guilty on account of it, as Adam himself was ; and that the
inherent corruption flowing from that act, belongs to us in the same
sense and in the same way, that It belonged to him. His sin, it is
therefore said, "• Is ours not because it is Imputed to us ; but It is
imputed to us, because it is truly and properly our own." We
have constantly to contend Avith the ambiguity of terms. There
is a sense in which the above proposition Is perfectly true, and
there is a sense In which it Is not true. It is true that the right-
eousness of Christ is Imputed to us because it is ours according to
the terms of the covenant of grace ; because It was wrought out
for us by our great head and representative, who obeyed and suf-
fered in our stead. But it is not true that it Is ours In the sense
that we were the agents by whom that righteousness was effected,
or the persons In whom it Inheres. In like manner, Adam's sin
may be said to be imputed to us because it Is ours, Inasmuch as it
is the sin of the divinely constituted head and representative of
our race. But it is not ours in the same sense in which It was his.
It was not our act, i. g., an act In which our reason, will, and con-
science were exercised. Thei'e Is a sense In which the act of an
agent Is the act of the principal. It binds him In law, as effect-
ually as he could bind himself. But he Is not, on that account,
the efficient agent of the ac'.. The sense in which many assert
§12.] REALISTIC THEORY. 217
that the act of Adam was our act, is, that the same numerical
nature or substance, the same reason and will Avhich existed and
acted in Adam, belong to us ; so that we were truly and properly
the agents of his act of apostasy.
President Edtvards' Theory of Identity.
The assumption which President Edwards undertakes to con-
trovert, is, " Tiiat Adam and his posterity are not one, but entirely
distinct agents." ^ The theory on which he endeavours to prove that
Adam and his posterity were one agent, is not exactly the old real-
istic theory, it is rather a theory of his own, and depends on his
peculiar views of oneness or identity. According to him, all one-
ness depends upon " the arbitrary constitution of God." The
only reason why a full grown tree is the same with its first germ ;
or that the body of an adult man is the same with his infant frame ;
is that God so wills to regard them. No creature is one and the
same in the different periods of its existence, because it is numer-
ically one and the same substance, or life, or organism ; but simply
because God " treats them as one, by communicating to them like
properties, relations, and circumstances ; and so leads us to regai'd
and treat them as one."^ "If the existence," he says, "of cre-
ated substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of
God's immediate power in that moment, without any dependence
on prior existence, as mucli as the first creation out of nothing, then
what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect ; and
simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past
existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain
established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case,
but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator ;
who, by his wise and sovereign establishment so unites successive
new effects, that he treats them as one." ^ He uses two illustra-
tions which make his meaning perfectly plain. The brightness of
the moon seems to us a permanent thing, but is really a new
effect produced every moment. It ceases, and is renewed, in
every successive point of time, and so becomes altogether a new
effect at each instant. It is no more numerically the same thing
with that which existed in the preceding moment, than the sound
of the wind that blows now, is individually the same sound of the
wind which blew just before. What is true of the brightness of
the moon, he says, must be true also of its solidity, and of every-
1 Original Sin, iv. iii. ; Works, edit. N. Y. 1829, vol. ii. p. 546.
2 Ibid. p. 556. 8 Ibid. pp. 555, 556.
218 PART n. Ch. viil — sin.
thing else belonging to its substance. Again, images of things
placed before a mirror seem to remain precisely the same, with a
continuing perfect identity. But it is known to be otherwise.
These images are constantly renewed by the impression and re-
flection of new rays of light. The image which exists this mo-
ment is not at all derived from the image which existed the last
preceding moment. It is no more numerically the same, than if
painted anew by an artist with colours which vanish as soon as
they are put on. The obvious fallacy of these illustrations is, that
the cases are apparently, but not really alike. The brightness of
the moon and the image on a mirror, are not substances having
continued existence ; they are mere effects on our visual organs.
Whereas the substances which produce those effects are objective
existences or entities, and not sul:ijective states of our sensibility.
Edwards, however, says tliat what is true of the images, must be
true of the bodies themselves. " They cannot be the same, with an
absolute identity, but must be wholly renewed every moment, if the
case be as has been proved, that their present existence is not, strictly
speaking, at all the effect of their past existence ; but is wholly,
every instant, the effect of a new agency or exertion of the power-
ful cause of their existence." ^ As therefore, there is no such thing
as numerical identity of substance in created things, and as all one-
ness depends on " the arbitrary constitution of God," and things
are one only because God so regards and treats them, there is " no
solid reason," Edwards contends, why the posterity of Adam should
not be " treated as one with him for the derivation .... of
the loss of righteousness, and consequent corruption and guilt." ^
According to this doctrine of identity, everything that exists, even
the soul of man, is, and remains one, not because of any continuity
of life and substance, but as a series of new effects produced in
every successive moment by the renewed efficiency of God. The
whole theory resolves itself iiito the doctrine that preservation is
continued creation. The argument of Edwards in proof of that
point is, that " the existence of every created substance, is a de-
pendent existence, and therefore is an effect and must have some
cause ; and the cause must be one of these two ; either the ante-
cedent existence of the same substance, or else the power of the
Creator." It cannot be the antecedent existence of the same sub-
stance, and therefore must be the power of God. His conclusion
is that God's upholding of created substance " is altogether equiva-
lent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment." ^
1 Or'tfjinnl Sin, iv. iii. ; Works, vol. ii. p- 555, note.
2 Jbld. p. 557. ^ ^bid. p. 554.
§12. REALISTIC THEORY. 219
Objections to the Edwardian Theory.
The fatal consequences of this view of the natui'e of preservation
were presented under the head of Providence. All that need be
here remarked, is, —
1. That it pi'oceeds upon the assumption that we can under-
stand the relation of the efficiency of God to the effects pro-
duced in time. Because every new effect which we produce
is due to a new exercise of our efficiency, it is assumed that
such must be tlie case with God. He, however, inhabits eter-
nity. With him there is no distinction between the past and future.
All things are equally present to Him. As we exist in time and
space, all our modes of thinking are conditioned by these circum-
stances of our being. But as God is not subject to the limitations
of time or space, we have no right to transfer these limitations to
Him. This only proves that we cannot understand how God pro-
duces successive effects. We do not know that it is by successive
acts, and therefore it is most unreasonable and presumptuous to
make that assumption the ground of explaining great Scriptural
doctrines. It is surely just as conceivable or intelligible that God
should will the continuous existence of the things which He creates,
as that He should create them anew at every successive moment.
2. This doctrine of a continued creation destroys the Scriptural
and common sense distinction between creation and preservation.
The two are constantly presented as different, and they are re-
garded as different by the common judgment of mankind. By
creation, God calls things into existence, and by preservation He
upholds them in being. The two ideas are essentially distinct.
Any theory, therefore, which confounds them must be fallacious.
God wills that the things which He has created shall continue to
be ; and to deny that He can cause continuous existence is to deny
his omnipotence.
3. This doctrine denies the existence of substance. The idea
of substance is a primitive idea. It is given in the constitution of
our nature. It is an intuitive truth, as is proved by its universal-
ity and necessity. One of the essential elements of that idea is
uninterrupted continuity of being. Substance is that which stands ;
which remains unchanged under all the ])henomenal mutations to
which it is subjected. According to the theory of continued crea-
tion there is and can be no created substance. God is the only
substance in the universe. Everything out of God is a series of
new effects ; there is nothing which has continuous existence, and
therefore there is no substance.
220 PART n. ch. vm. — sin.
4. It necessarily follows that if God is the only substance He is
the only agent in the universe. All things out of God being every
moment called into bemg out of nothing, are resolved into modes
of God's efficiency. If He creates the soul every successive instant,
He creates all its states, thoughts, feelings, and volitions. The soul
is only a series of divine acts. And therefore there can be no
free agency, no sin, no responsibility, no individual existence. The
universe is only the self-manifestation of God. This doctrine,
therefore, in its consequences, is essentially pantheistic.
5. In resolving all identity into an " arbitrary constitution of
God," it denies that there is any real identity in any created things.
Edwards expressly says, They are not numerically the same.
They cannot be the same with an absolute identity. They are one
only because God so regards them, and because they are alike, so
that we look upon them as the same. This being the case, there
seems to be no foundation even for guilt and pollution in the indi-
vidual soul as flowing from its own acts, because there is nothing
but an apparent, not a real connection between the present and the
past in the life of the soul. It is not the same soul that is guilty
to-day of the sin connnitted yesterday. Much less can such an
arbitrary or assumed and merely apparent identity between Adam
and his race be a just ground of their bearing the guilt of his first
sin. In short, this doctrine subverts all our ideas. It assumes that
things which, as the human soul, are really one, are not one in the
sense of numerical sameness ; and that things wliich are not identi-
cal, as Adam and his posterity, are one in the same sense that the
soul of a man is one, or that identity can be predicated of any
creature. This doctrine, therefore, which would account for the
guilt and native depravity of men on the assumption of an arbitrary
divine constitution of God, by which beings which are really distinct
subsistences are declared to be one, is not only contrary to the
Scriptures and to the intuitive convictions of men, but it affijrds no
satisfactory solution of the facts which it is intended to explain. It
does not bring home to any human conscience that the sin of Adam
was his sin in the sense in which our sins of yesterday are our guilt
of to-day.
The Proper Realistic Theory.
Tlie strange doctrine of Edwards, above stated, agrees with the
realistic theory so far as that he and the realists unite in saying
that Adam and his race are one in the same sense in which a tree
is one during its whole progress from the germ to maturity, or in
which the human soul is one during all the diffl'ivnt periods of its
§12] REALISTIC THEORY. 221
existence. It essentially differs, however, in that Edwards denies
numerical sameness in any case. Identity, according to him, does
not in any creature include the continued existence of one and the
same substance. The realistic doctrine, on the contrary, makes
the numerical sameness of substance the essence of identity. Every
genus or species of plants or animals is one because all the individ-
uals of those genera and species are partakers of one and the same
substance. In every species there is but one substance of which
the individuals are the modes of manifestation. According to this
theory humanity is numerically one and the same substance in
Adam and in all the individuals of his race. The sin of Adam
was, therefore, the sin of all mankind, because committed by
numerically the same rational and voluntary substance which con-
stitutes us men. It was our sin in the same sense that it was his
sin, because it was our act (the act of our reason and will) as much
as it was his. There are two classes of objections to this theory
which might here properly come under consideration. First, those
which bear against realism as a theory ; and, secondly, those which
relate to its application to the relation of the union between us and
Adam as a solution of the problems of original sin.
Recapitulation of the Objections to the Realistic Theory.
The objections to the realistic doctrine were presented when the
nature of man was under consideration. It was then stated,
(1.) That realism is a mere hypothesis ; one out of many possible
assumptions. Possibility is all that can be claimed for it. It cannot
be said to be probable, much less certain ; and therefore cannot
legitimately be made the basis of other doctrines. (2.) That it has
no support from the Scriptures. The Bible indeed does say that
Adam and his race are one ; but it also says that Christ and his
people arS one ; that all the multitudes of believers of all ages and
in heaven and earth are one. So in common life we speak of every
organized community as one. The visible Church is one. Every
separate state or kingdom is one. Everything depends on the
nature of this oneness. And that is to be determined by the
nature of the thing spoken of, and the usus loqiiendi of the Bible
and of ordinary life. As no man infers from the fact that the
Scriptui'es declare Christ and his people to be one, that they are
numerically the same substance ; or from the unity predicated of
believers as distinguished from the rest of mankind, that they are
of one substance and the rest of men of a different substance ; so
we have no right to infer from the fact that the Bible says that
222 PART II. Cn. VIII. — SIN.
Adam and his posterity are one that they are numerically the same
substance. Neither do the Scriptures so describe the nature and
eftects of the union between us and Adam as to necessitate or justify
the realistic doctrine. The nature and effects of our oneness with
Adam are declared in all essential points to be analogous to the
nature and effects of our oneness with Christ. As the latter is not
a oneness of substance, so neither is the other. (3.) It was shown
that realism has no support from the consciousness of men, but on
the contrary, that it contradicts the teachings of consciousness as
interpreted by the vast majority of our race, learned and unlearned.
Every man is revealed to himself as an individual substance.
(4.) Realism, as argued above, contradicts the doctrine of the
Scriptures in so far that it is irreconcilable with the Scriptural doc-
trine of the separate existence of the soul. (5.) It subverts the
doctrine of the Trinity in so far that it makes the Father, Son,
and Spirit one God only in the sense in which all men are one
man. The persons of the Trinity are one God, because they are
one in essence or substance ; and all men are one man because
they are one in essence. The answers which Trinitarian realists
give to this objection are unsatisfactory, because they assume the
divisibility, and consequently the materiality of Spirit. (6.) It is
difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the realistic theory with the
sinlessness of Christ. If the one numerical essence of humanity
became guilty and polluted in Adam, and if we are guilty and pol-
luted because we are partakers of that fallen substance, how can
Christ's human nature have been free from sin if He took upon
Him the same numerical essence which sinned in Adam. (7.) The
above objections are theological or Scriptural ; others of a philo-
sophical character have availed to banish the doctrine of realism
from all modern schools of philosophy, except so far as it has been
merged in the higher forms of pantheistic monism.
Realism no Solution of the Problem of Original Sin.
The objections which bear against this theory as a solution of
the problems of original sin are no less decisive. There are two
things which realism proposes to explain. First, the fact that we
are punished for the sin of Adam ; and, secondly, that hereditary
depravity is in us truly and properly sin, involving guilt as well as
pollution. The former is accounted for on the ground that Adam's
sin was our own act ; and the latter on the ground that native
depravity is the consequence of our own voluntary action. As a
man is responsible for his character or permanent state of mind
§12.] REALISTIC THEORY. 223
produced by his actual transgressions, so we are responsible for the
character with which we come into the world, because it is the
result of our voluntary apostasy from God. To this it is an obvious
objection, —
1. That admitting realism to be true ; admitting that humanity
is numerically one and the same substance, of which individual men
are the modes of manifestation ; and admitting that this generic
humanity sinned in Adam, this affords no satisfactory solution of
either of the facts above stated. Two things are necessary in order
to vindicate the infliction of punishment for actual sin on the
ground of personal responsibility. First, that the sin be an act
of conscious self-determination. Otherwise it cannot be brouo;ht
home upon the conscience so as to produce the sense of criminality.
And suffering without the sense of criminality or blameworthiness,
so far as the sufferer is concerned, is not punishment, but wanton
cruelty. And, secondly, to vindicate punishment in the eye of
justice, in the case supposed, there must be personal criminality
manifest to all intelligent beings cognizant of the case. If a man
should commit an offence in a state of somnambulism or of insanity,
when he did not know what he did, and all recognition of which
on his I'estoration to a normal condition is impossible, it is plain
that such an offence could not justly be the ground of punishment.
Suffering inflicted on such ground would not be punishment in the
view of the sufferer, or righteous in the view of others. It is no
less plain that if a man should commit a crime in a sound state of
mind, and afterwards become insane, he could not justly be pun-
ished so long as he continued insane. The execution of a maniac
or idiot for any offence committed prior to the insanity or idiocy
would be an outrage. If these principles are correct then it is plain
that, even admitting all that realists claim, it affords no relief. It
gives no satisfactory solution either of our being punished for Adam's
sin or for the guilt which attaches to our inherent hereditary deprav-
ity. A sin of which it is impossible that we should be conscious as
our voluntary act, can no more be the ground of punishment as our
act, than the sin of an idiot, of a madman, or of a corpse. When
tiie body of Cromwell was exhumed and gibbeted, Cromwell was
not punished ; and the act was, in the sight of all mankind, merely
a manifestation of impotent revenge.
2. But tiie realistic theory cannot be admitted. The assumption
that we acted thousands of years before we were born, so as to
be personally responsible for such act, is a monstrous assumption.
It is, as Baur says, an unthinkable proposition ; that is, one to which
224 PART II. Ch. VIIL — sin.
no, intelligible meaning .can be attached. We can vmderstand how
it may be said that we died in Christ and rose with Him ; that his
death was our death and his resurrection our resurrection, in the
sense that He acted for us as our substitute, head, and representative.
But to say that we actually and really died and rose in Him ; that
we were the agents of his acts, conveys no idea to the mind. In
like manner we can understand how it may be said that we sinned
in Adam and fell with him in so far as he was the divinely appointed
head and representative of his race. But the proposition that wo
performed his act of disobedience is to our ears a sound without any
meaning. It is just as much an impossibility as that a nonentity
should act. We did not then exist. We had no being before our
existence in this world ; and that we should have acted before we
existed is an absolute impossibility. It is to be remembered that an
act implies an agent ; and the agent of a responsible voluntary act
must be a person. Before the existence of the personality of a man
that man cannot perform any voluntary action. Actual sin is an act
of voluntary self-determination ; and therefore before the existence
of the self, such determination is an impossibility. The stuff or sub-
stance out of which a man is made may have existed before he came
into being, but not the man himself. Admitting that the souls of
men are formed out of the generic substance of humanity, that
substance is no more the man than the dust of the earth out of
which the body of Adam was fashioned was his body. Voluntary
agency, responsible action, moral character, and guilt can be pred-
icated only of persons, and cannot by possibility be predicable of
them, or really belong to them before they exist. The doctrine,
therefore, which supposes that we are personally guilty of the sin
of Adam on the ground that we were the agents of that act, that
our will and reason were so exercised in that action as to make us
personally responsible for it and for its consequences, is absolutely
inconceivable.
3. It is a further objection to this theory that it assigns no reason
why we are responsible for Adam's first sin and not for his sub-
sequent transgressions. If his sin is ours because the whole of
humanity, as a generic nature, acted in him, this reason applies
as well to all his other sins as to his first act of disobedience, at
least prior to the birth of his children. The genus was no more
individualized and concentrated in Adam when he was in the gar-
den, than after he was expelled from it. Besides, why is it the sin
of Adam rather than, or more than the sin of Eve for which we are
responsible ? That mankind do bear a relation to the sin of Adam
§ 12.] REALISTIC THEORY. 225
which they do not sustain to the sin of Eve is a plain Scriptural
fact. We are said to bear the guilt of his sin, but never to bear
the guilt of hers. The reason is that Adam was our representa-
tive. The covenant was made with him ; just as in after genera-
tions the covenant was made with Abraham and not with Sarah.
On this ground there is an intelligible reason why the guilt of
Adam's sin should be imputed to us, which does not apply to the
sin of Eve. But on the realistic theory the reverse is the case.
Eve sinned first. Generic humanity as individualized in her, apos-
tatized from God, before Adam had offended ; and therefore it was
her sin rather than his, or more than his, which ruined our com-
mon nature. But such is not the representation of Scripture.
4. The objection urged against the doctrine of mediate imputa-
tion, that it is inconsistent with the Apostle's doctrine of justifica-
tion, and incompatible with his argument in Rom. v. J2-21, bears
with equal force against the realistic theory. What the Apostle
teaches, what he most strenuously insists upon, and what is the
foundation of every believer's hope, is that we are justified for acts
which were not our own ; of which we were not the agents, and
the merit of which does not attach to us personally and does not
constitute our moral character. This he tells us is analogous to
the case of Adam. We were not the agents of his act. His sin
was not our sin. Its guilt does not belong to us personally. It is
imputed to us as something not our own, a peceatuin alienum, and
the penalty of it, the forfeiture of the divine favour, the loss of
original righteousness, and spiritual death, are its sad consequences.
Just as the righteousness of Christ is not our own but is imputed
to us, and we have a title in justice on the ground of that righteous-
ness, if we accept and trust it, to all the benefits of redemption.
This, which is clearly the doctrine of the Apostle and of the Prot-
estant churches, the realistic doctrine denies. That is, it denies
that the sin of Adam as the sin of another is the ground of our con-
demnation ; and in consistency it must also deny (as in fact the
great body of Realists do deny) that the righteousness of Christ, as
the righteousness of another, is the ground of our justification.
What makes this objection the more serious, is that the reasons
assigned for denying that Adam's sin, if not our own, can justly be
imputed to us, bear with like force against the imputation of a
righteousness which is not personally our own. The great princi-
ple which is at the foundation of the realistic, as of other false
theories concerning origmal sin, is, that a man can be responsible
only for his own acts and for his self-acquired character. If this
VOL. n. 15
226 PART II. Ch. VIIL — sin.
be so, then, according to the Apostle, unless we can perfectly ful-
fil the law, and restore our nature to the image of God, by our own
agency, we must perish for ever.
5. Finally, the solution presented by Realists to explain our
relation to Adam and to solve the problems of original sin, ought
to be rejected, because Realism is a purely philosophical theory.
It is indeed often said that the doctrine of our covenant relation to
Adam, and of the immediate imputation of his sin to his posterity,
is a theory. But this is not correct. It is not a theory, but the
simple statement of a plain Scriptural fact. The Bible says, that
Adam's sin was the cause of the condemnation of his race. It tells
us that it is not the mere occasional cause, but the judicial ground
of that condemnation ; that it was for, or on account of, his sin, that
the sentence of condemnation was pronounced upon all men. This
is the whole doctrine of immediate imputation. It is all that that
doctrine includes. Nothing is added to the simple Scriptural state-
ment. Realism, however, is a philosophical theory outside of the
Scriptures, intended to account for the fact that Adam's sin is the
ground of the condemnation of our race. It introduces a doctrine
of universals, of the relation of individuals to genera and species,
concerning which the Scriptures teach nothing, and it makes that
philosophical theory an integral part of Scripture doctrine. This
is adding to the word of God. It is making the truth of Scriptural
doctrines to depend on the correctness of philosophical specula-
tions. It is important to bear in mind the relation which philosophy
properly sustains to theology. (1.) The relation is intimate and
necessary. The two sciences embrace nearly the same spheres and
are conversant with the same subjects. (2.) There is a philosophy
which underlies all Scriptural doctrines ; or which the Scriptures
assume in all their teachings. (3.) As the doctrines of the Bible
are from God, and therefore infallible and absolutely true, no philo-
sophical principle can be admitted as sound, which does not accord
with those doctrines. (4.) Therefore the true oflfice and sphere of
Christian philosophy, or of philosophy in the hands of a Christian,
is to ascertain and teach those facts and principles concerning God,
man, and nature, which are in accordance with the divine word.
A Christian cannot assume a certain theory of human freedom and
by that theory determine what the Bible teaches of foreordination
and providence ; but on the contrary, he should allow the teach-
ings of the Bible to determine his theory of liberty. And so of all
other doctrines ; and this may be done in full assurance that the
philosophy which we are thus led to adopt, will be found to authen-
§13.] ORIGINAL Sm. 227
ticate itself as true at the bar of enlightened reason. The objec-
tion to Realism is, that it inverts this order. It assumes to con-
trol Scripture, instead of being controlled by it. The Bible says
we are condemned for Adam's sin. Realism denies this, and says
no man is or can be condemned except for his own sin.
§ 13. Original Sin.
The effects of Adam's sin upon his posterity are declared in our
standards to be, (1.) The guilt of his first sin. (2.) The loss of
original righteousness. (3.) The corruption of our whole nature,
which (i. e., which corruption), is commonly called original sin.
Commonly, but not always. Not unfrequently by original sin is
meant all the subjective evil consequences of the apostasy of our
first parent, and it therefore includes all three of the particulars
just mentioned. The National Synod of France, therefore, con-
demned the doctrine of Placaeus, because he made original sin to
consist of inherent, hereditary depravity, to the exclusion of the
guilt of Adam's first sin.
This inherent corruption in which all men since the fall are born,
is properly called original sin, (1.) Because it is truly of the nature
of sin. (2.) Because it flows from our first parents as the origin
of our race. (3.) Because it is the origin of all other sins ; and
(4.) Because it is in its nature distinguished from actual sins.
The Nature of Original Sin.
As to the nature of this hereditary corruption, although the faith
of the Church Catholic, at least of the Latin, Lutheran, and Re-
formed churches, has been, in all that is essential, uniform, yet
diversity of opinion has prevailed among theologians. (1.) Ac-
cording to many of the Greek fathers, and in later times, of the
extreme Remonstrants or Arminlans, it is a physical, rather than a
moral evil. Adam's physical condition was deteriorated by his
apostasy, and that deteriorated natural constitution has descended
to his posterity. (2.) According to others, concupiscence, or
native corruption, is such an ascendency of man's sensuous, or ani-
mal nature over his higher attributes of reason and conscience, as
involves a great proneness to sin, but is not itself sinful. Some of
the Romish theologians distinctly avow this doctrine, and some
Protestants, as we have seen, maintain that this is the symbolical
doctrine of the Roman Church itself. The same view has been
advocated by some divines of our own age and country. (3.) Oth-
ers hold a doctrine nearly allied to that just mentioned. They
228 PART n. Ch. viil — sm.
speak of inherent depravity ; and admit tliat it is of the nature of a
moral corruption, but nevertheless deny that it brings guilt upon
the soul, until it is exercised, assented to, and cherished. (4.) The
doctrine of the Reformed and Lutheran churches upon this sub-
ject is thus presented in their authorized Confessions : —
The " Augsburg Confession."^ " Docent quod post lapsum Adas
omnes homines, secundum naturam propagati, nascantur cum pec-
cato, hoc est, sine metu Dei, sine fiducia erga Deum, et cum con-
cupiscentia."
" Ai'ticuli Smalcaldici." ^ " Peccatum haereditarium tarn profunda
et tetra est corruptio naturas, ut nullius hominis ratione intelligi
possit, sed ex Scripturae patefactione agnoscenda, et credenda sit."
" Formula Corcordise."^ " Credendum est ... . quod sit per
omnia totalis carentia, defectus seu privatio concreatae in Paradise
justitiae originalis seu imaginis Dei, ad quam homo initio in veri-
tate, sanctitate atque justitia creatus fuerat, et quod simul etiam sit
impotentia et inaptitude, dSwa/Jia et stupiditas, qua homo ad omnia
divina seu spiritualia sit prorsus ineptus Prasterea, quod
peccatum originale in humana natura non tantummodo sit ejusmodi
totalis carentia, seu defectus omnium bonorum in rebus spirituali-
bus ad Deum pertinentibus : sed quod sit etiam, loco imaginis Dei
amissse in homine, intima, pessima, profundissima (instar cujusdam
abyssi), inscrutabilis et ineffabilis corruptio totius naturae et omnium
virium, imprimis vero superiorum et principalium animae facultatum,
in mente, intellectu, corde et voluntate."
" Constat Christianos non tantum actualia delicta . . . peccata
esse agnoscere et defin ire debere, sed etiam . . . hEeredltarium mor-
bum . . . imprimis pro horribili peccato, et quidem pro principio
et capite omnium peccatorum (e quo reliquae transgressiones, tan-
quam e radice nascantur . . .) omnino habendum esse." *
" Confessio Helvetica II." ^ " Qualis (homo Adam) factus est a
lapsu, tales sunt omnes, qui ex ipso prognati sunt, peccato inquam,
morti, variisque obnoxii calamitatibus. Peccatum autem intelligi-
mus esse nativam illam hominis corruptionem ex primis illis nostris
parentibus in nos omnes derivatam vel propagatam, qua concu-
piscentiis pravis immersi et a bono aversi, ad omne vero malum
propensi, pleni omni nequitia, diffidentia, contemptu et odio Dei,
nihil boni ex nobis ipsis facere, imo ne cogitare quidem possumus."
" Confessio Gallicana." ^ " Credimus hoc vitium (ex propaga-
tione manans) esse vere peccatum."
1 I. ii. 1 ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 9. 2 nx. j. 3 ; /bid, p. 317.
8 I. 10, 11 ; /biri. p. f)40, the second of that number.
< I. 5; Jbkl. p. 640, the first of that number.
6 VIII.; Nieineyer, CoUectio Confessionum, p. 477. «xi. ; Jbid. p. 332.
§13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 229
" Articuli XXXIX." ^ " Peccatura originis ... est vitium et
depravatio naturse cujuslibet hominis ex Adamo naturaliter propa-
gati, qua fit ut ab original! justitia quam longissime distet ; ad
malum sua natura propendeat et caro semper adversus spiritum
concupiscat, unde in unoquoque nascentium iram Dei atque dam-
nationem meretur."
"Confessio Belgiea."^ " Peccatum originis est corruptio totius
naturEB et vitium liareditarium, quo et ipsi infantes in matris utero
polluti sunt : quodque veluti noxia qusedam radix genus omne
peccatorum in homine producit, estque tarn foedum atque execrab-
ile coram Deo, ut ad universi generis humani condemnationem
sufficiat."
" Catechesis Heidelbergensis." (Pravitas humanas naturae exis-
tit) " ex lapsu et inobedientia primorum parentum Adami et Evae.
nine natura nostra ita est depravata, ut oranes in peccatis con-
cipiamur et nascamur." ^
By nature in these Confessions it is expressly taught, we are not
to understand essence or substance (as was held by Matthias Pla-
cius, and by him only at the time of the Reformation). On this
point the Form of Concord says : That although original sin cor-
rupts our whole nature, yet the essence or substance of the soul is
one thing, and original sin is another. " Discrimen igitur retinen-
dum est inter naturam nostram, qualis a Deo creata est, hodieque
conservatur, in qua peccatum originale habitat, et inter ipsum pec-
catum originis, quod in natura habitat. Haec enim duo secundum
sacrae Scripturae regulam distincte considerari, doceri et credi debent
et possunt." *
" The Westminster Confession." ^ " By this sin they (our first
parents) fell from their original righteousness and communion with
God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the
faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root of all
mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in
sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending
from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption,
whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to
all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual trans-
gressions. This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain
in those that are regenerated ; and although it be through Christ
pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof,
are truly and properly sin."
1 IX. ; Niemeyer, p. 603. 2 xv. ; Ibid. p. 370.
8 VII.; Ibid. p. 431.
< I. 33; Hase, p. 645. 6 Chapter vi §§ 2-5.
i
280 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
Statement of the Protestant Doctrine.
From the above statements it appears that, according to the doc-
trine of the Protestant churches, original sin, or corruption of
nature derived from Adam, is not, (1.) A corruption of the sub-
stance or essence of the soul. (2.) Neither is it an essential ele-
ment infused into the soul as poison is mixed with wine. The
Form of Concord, for example, denies that the evil dispositions of
our fallen nature are " conditiones, seu concreatse essentiales na-
turse proprietates." Original sin is declared to be an " accidens,
i. e., quod non per se subsistit, sed in aliqua substantia est, et ab ea
discerni potest." The affirmative statements on this subject are,
(1.) That this corruption of nature affects the whole soul. (2.)
That it consists in the loss or absence of original righteousness,
and consequent entire moral depravity of our nature, including or
manifesting itself in an aversion from all spiritual good, or from
God, and an inclination to all evil. (3.) That it is truly and
properly of the nature of sin, involving both guilt and pollution.
(4.) That it retains its character as sin even in the regenerated.
(5.) That it renders the soul spiritually dead, so that the natural,
or unrenewed man, is entirely unable of himself to do anything
good in the sight of God.
This doctrine therefore stands < pposed, —
1. To that which teaches that the race of man is uninjured by
the fall of Adam.
2. To that which teaches that the evils consequent on the fall
are merely physical.
3. To the doctrine which makes original sin entirely negative,
consisting in the want of original righteousness.
4. To the doctrine which admits a hereditary depravity of na-
ture, and makes it consist in an inclination to sin, but denies that
it is itself sinful. Some of the orthodox theologians malde a
distinction between vitium and peccatum. The latter term they
wished to confine to actual sin, while the former was used to desig-
nate indwelling and hereditary sinfulness. There are serious
objections to this distinction : first, that vitium, as thus understood,
is really sin ; it includes both guilt and pollution, and is so defined
by Vitringa and others who make the distinction. Secondly, it is
opposed to established theological usage. Depravity, or inherent
hereditary corruption, has always been designated peccatum, and
therefore to say that it is not peccatum, but merely vitium, produces
confusion and leads to error. Thirdly, it is contrary to Scripture ;
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 231
for the Bible undeniably designates indwelling or hereditary cor-
ruption, or vitium, as dfiaprLa. This is acknowledged by Romanists
who deny that such eoiicupiscence after regeneration is of the na-
ture of sin.^
5. The fifth form of doctrine to which the Protestant faith
stands opposed, is that which admits a moral deterioration of our
nature, which deserves the displeasure of God, and which is there-
fore truly sin, and yet denies that the evil is so great as to amount
to spiritual death, and to involve the entire inability of the natural
man to what is spiritually good.
6. And the docti'ine of the Protestant churches is opposed to
the teachings of those who deny that original sin affects the whole
man, and assert that it has its seat exclusively in the affections or
the heart, while the understanding and reason are uninjured or
uninfluenced.
In order to sustain the Augustinian (or Protestant) doctrine of
original sin, therefore, three points are to be established : I. That
all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation are
born destitute of original righteousness, and the subjects of a cor-
ruption of nature which is truly and properly sin. II. That this
original corruption affects the whole man ; not the body only to
the exclusion of the soul ; not the lower faculties of the soul to
the exclusion of the higher ; and not the heart to the exclusion of
the intellectual powers. III. That it is of such a nature as that
before regeneration fallen men are " utterly indisposed, disabled,
and opposed to all good."
Proof of the Doctrine of Original Sin.
First Argument from the Universality of Sin.
The first argument in proof of this doctrine is drawn from the
universal sinfulness of men. All men are sinners. This is unde-
niably the doctrine of the Scriptures. It is asserted, assumed, and
proved. The assertions of this fact are too numerous to be quoted.
In 1 Kings viii. 46, it is said, " There is no man that sinneth not."
Eccl. vii. 20, " There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good,
and sinneth not." Is. liii. 6, " All we like sheep have gone astray ;
w^e have turned every one to his own way." Ixiv. 6, " We are all
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."
Ps. cxxx. 3, " If thou. Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord,
who shall stand ? " Ps. cxliii. 2, " In thy sight shall no man living
1 See above, pp. 178, 179.
232 PART II. Ch. VIIL — sin.
be justified." Rom. iii. 19, " The whole world (ttSs 6 Koo-yuo?) is
guilty before God." Verses 22, 23, " There is no difference : for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Gal. iii. 22,
" The Scripture hath concluded all under sin ;" {. e., hath declared
all men to be under the power and condemnation of sin. James
iii. 2, " In many things we offend all." 1 John i. 8, " If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us." Verse 10, " If we say that we have not sinned, we make
him a liar, and his word is not in us." 1 John v. 19, " The whole
world lieth in wickedness." Such are only a few of the assertions
of the universal sinfulness of men with which the Scriptures
abound.
But in the second place, this melancholy fact is constantly as-
sumed in the Word of God. The Bible everywhere addresses men
as sinners. The religion which it reveals is a relio;ion for sinners.
All the institutions of the Old Testament, and all the doctrines of
the New, take it for granted that men universally are under the
power and condemnation of sin. " The world," as used in Scrip-
ture, designates the mass of mankind, as distinguished from the
church, or the regenerated people of God, and always involves in
its application the idea of sin. The world hateth you. I am not
of the world. I have chosen you -out of the world. All the ex-
hortations of the Scriptures addressed to men indiscriminately,
calling them to repentance, of necessity assume the universality of
sin. The same is true of the general threatenings and promises
of the Word of God. In short, if all men are not siiniers, the
Bible is not adapted to their real character and state.
But the Scriptures not only directly assert and everywhere
assume the universality of sin among men, but this is a point
which perhaps more than any other is made the subject of a formal
and protracted argument. The Apostle, especially in his Epistle
to the Romans, begins with a regular process of proof, that all,
whether Jews or Gentiles, are under sin. Until this fact is admit-
ted and acknowledged, there is no place for and no need of the
Gospel, which is God's method of saving sinners. Paul therefore
begins by asserting God's purpose to punish all sin. He then
shows that the Gentiles are universally chargeable with the sin of
impiety ; that although knowing God, they neither worship him as
God, nor are thankful. The natural, judicial, and therefore the
unavoidable consequence of impiety, according to the Apostle's
doctrine, is immorality. Those who abandon Him, God gives up
to the unrestrained dominion of evil. The whole Gentile world
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 233
therefore was sunk in sin. With the Jews, he tells us, the case
was no better. They had more correct knowledge of God and of
his law, and many institutions of divine appointment, so that their
advantages were great every way. Nevertheless they were as
truly and as universally sinful as the Gentiles. Their own Scrip-
tures, which of course were addressed to them, expressly declare,
There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that under-
standeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone
out of the Avay, they are together become unprofitable ; there is
none that doeth good, no not one. Therefore, he concludes. The
whole world is guilty before God. Jews and Gentiles are all under
sin. Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified.
This is the foundation of the Apostle's whole doctrinal system, and
of the religion of the Bible. Jesus Christ came to save his people
from their sins. If men are not sinners Christ is not the Salvator
Hominum.
What the Scriptures so clearly teach is taught no less clearly by
experience and history. Every man knows that he himself is a
sinner. He knows that every human being whom he ever saw, is
in the same state of apostasy from God. History contains the
record of no sinless man, save the Man Christ Jesus, who, by
being sinless, is distinguished from all other men. We have no
account of any family, tribe, or nation free from the contamination
of sin. The universality of sin among men is therefore one of the
most imdeniable doctrines of Scripture, and one of the most certain
facts of experience. '
Second Argument from the Entire Sinfulness of Men.
This universal depravity of men is no slight evil. The whole
human race, by their apostasy from God, are totally depraved.
B}' total depravity, is not meant that all men are equally wicked ;
nor that any man is as thoroughly corrupt as it is possible for a
man to be ; nor that men are destitute of all moral virtues. The
Scriptures recognize the fact, which experience abundantly con-
firms, that men, to a greater or less degree, are honest in dealings,
kind in their feelings, and beneficent in their conduct. Even the
heathen, the Apostle teaches us, do by nature the things of the
law. They are more or less under the dominion of conscience,
which approves or disapproves their moral conduct. All this is
perfectly consistent with the Scriptural doctrine of total depravity,
which includes the entire absence of holiness ; the want of due
apprehensions of the divine perfections, and of our relation to God
234 PART 11. ch. vni. — sin.
as our Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, Governor, and Redeemer.
There is common to all men a total alienation of the soul from God
so that no unrenewed man either understands or seeks after God ;
no such man ever makes God his portion, or God's glory the end
of his being. The apostasy from God is total or complete. All
men worship and serve the creature rather than, and more than the
Creator. They are all therefore declared in Scriptui'e to be spirit-
ually dead. They are destitute of any principle of spiritual life.
The dreadful extent and depth of this corruption of our nature are
proved, —
1. By its fruits ; by the fearful prevalence of the sins of the
flesh, of sins of violence, of the sins of the heart, as pride,
envy, and malice ; of the sins of the tongue, as slander and deceit;
of the sins of ii'religion, of ingratitude, profanity, and blasphemy ;
which have marked the whole history of our race, and which still
distinguishes the state of the whole world.
2. By the consideration that the claims of God on our supreme
reverence, love, and obedience, which are habitually and universally
disregarded by unrenewed men, are infinitely great. That is, they
are so great that they cannot be imagined to be greatei\ These
claims are not only ignored in times of excitement and passion, but
habitually and constantly. Men live without God. They are, says
the Apostle, Atheists. This alienation from God is so great and so
universal, that the Scriptures say that men are the enemies of God ;
that the carnal mind, i. e., that state of mind which belongs to all
men in their natural state, is enmity against God. This is proved
not only by neglect and di3o!)3dience, but also by direct rebellion
against his authority, when in his providence he takes away our
idols ; or when his law, with its inexorable demands and its fearful
penalty, is sent home upon the conscience, and God is seen to be
a consuming fire.
3. A third proof of the dreadful evil of this hereditary cor-
ruption is seen in the universal rejection of Christ by those
whom He came to save. He is in himself the chief among
ten thousand, and altogether lovely ; uniting in his own per-
son all the perfections of the Godhead, and all the excellences
of humanity. His mission was one of love, of a loA'e utterly in-
comprehensible, unmerited, immutable, and infinite. Through love
He not only humbled himself to be born of a woman, and to be
made under the law, but to live a life of poverty, sorrow, and per-
secution ; to endure inconceivably great sufferings for our sakes,
and finally to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. He has
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 235
rendered it possible for God to be just and yet justify the ungodly.
He therefore offers blessings of infinite value, without money and
without price, to all who will accept them. He has secured, and
offers to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ;
to make us kings and priests unto God, and to exalt us to an un-
ending state of inconceivable glory and blessedness. Notwithstand-
ing all this ; notwithstanding the divine excellence of his person,
the greatness of his love, the depth of his sufferings, and the value
of the blessings which He has provided, and Avithout which we
must perish eternally, men universally, when left to themselves,
reject Him. He came to his own and his own received Him not.
The world hated, and still hates Him ; will not recognize Him as
their God and Saviour ; will not accept of his offers ; will neither
love nor serve Him. The conduct of men towards Christ is the
clearest proof of the apostasy of our race, and of the depth of the
depravity into which they are sunk ; and, so far as the liearers of
the gospel are concerned, is the great ground of their condemnation.
All other grounds seem merged into this, for our Lord says, that
men are condemned because they do not believe in the only begot-
ten Son of God. And the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of the Apos-
tle, says, " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be
anathema maranatha ; " a sentence which will be ratified in the day
of judgment by every rational creature, fallen and unfallen, in the
universe.
The Sinfulness of Men Incorrigible.
4. Another proof of the point under consideration is found in
the incorrigible nature of original sin. It is, so far as we are con-
cerned, an incurable malady. Men are not so besotted even by
the fall as to lose their moral nature. They know that sin is an
evil, and that it exposes them to the righteous judgment of God.
From the beginning of the world, therefore, they have tried not
only to expiate, but also to destroy it. They have resorted to all
means possible to them for this purpose. They have tried the
resources of philosophy and of moral culture. They have with-
drawn from the contaminating society of their fellow-men. They
have summoned all the energies of their nature, and all the powers
of their will. They have subjected themselves to the most painful
acts of self-denial, to ascetic observances in all their forms. The
only result of these efforts has been that these anchorites have be-
come like whitened sepulchres, which appear outwardly beautiful,
while within they are filled with dead men's bones and all unclean-
ness. Men have been slow to learn what our Lord teaches, that
236 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
it is impossible to make the fruit good until the tree is good. An
evil, however, which is so indestructible must be very great.
Argument from, the Experience of God's People.
5. We may appeal on this subject to the experience of God's
people in every age and in every part of the world. In no one
respect has that experience been more uniform, than in the con-
viction of their depravity in the sight of an infinitely Holy God.
The patriarch Job, represented as the best man of his generation,
placed his hand upon his mouth, and his mouth in the dust before
God, and declared that he abhorred himself, and repented in dust
and ashes. David's Penitential Psalms are filled not only with
the confessions of sin, but also with the avowals of his deep deprav-
ity in the sight of God. Isaiah cried out. Woe is me ! I am a
man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.
The ancient prophets, even when sanctified from the womb, pro-
nounced their own righteousnesses as filthy rags. What is said
of the body politic is everywhere represented as true of the indi-
vidual man. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no
soundness in it ; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.
In the New Testament the sacred writers evince the same deep
sense of their own sinfulness, and strong conviction of tiie sinful-
ness of the race to which they belong. Paul speaks of himself as
the chief of sinners. He complains that he was carnal, sold under
sin. He groans under the burden of an evil nature, saying, O,
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of
this death. From the days of the Apostles to the present time,
there has been no diversity as to this point in the experience of
Christians. There is no disposition ever evinced by them to palli-
ate or excuse their sinfulness before God. They uniformly and
everywhere, and just in proportion to their holiness, humble them-
selves under a sense of their guilt and pollution, and abhor them-
selves repenting in dust and ashes. This is not an irrational, nor is
it an exaggerated experience. It is the natural effect of the appre-
hension of the truth ; of even a partial discernment of the lioliness
of God, of the spirituality of the law, and of the want of conform-
ity to that divine standard. There is always connected with this
experience of sin, the conviction that our sense of its evil and its
power over us, and consequently of our guilt and pollution, is alto-
gether inadequate. It is always a part of the believer's burden,
that he feels less than his reason and conscience, enlightened by the
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 237
Scriptures, teach him he ouglit to feel of his moral corruption and
degradation.
6. It need scarcely be added, that what the Scriptures so man-
ifestly teach indirectly of the depth of the corruption of our fallen
nature, they teach also by direct assertion. The human heart is
pronounced deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
Even in the beginning (Gen. vi. 5, 6), it was said, " God saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every im-
agination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
Job XV. 14-16, " What is man, that he should be clean ? And he
which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold,
he putteth no trust in his saints ; yea, the heavens are not clean in
his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which
drinketh iniquity like water." Eccl, ix. 3, " The heart of the sons
of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live,
and after that they go to the dead." With such passages the Word
of God is filled. It in the most explicit terms pronounces the deg-
radation and moral corruption of man consequent on the fall, to be
a total apostasy from God ; a state of spiritual death, as implying
the entire absence of any true holiness.
Third Argument from the early Manifestation of Sin.
A third great fact of Scripture and experience on this subject is
the early manifestation of sin. As soon as a child is capable of
moral action, it gives evidence of a perverted moral character.
We not only see the manifestations of anger, malice, selfishness,
envy, pride, and other evil dispositions, but the whole development
of the soul is toward the world. The soul of a child turns by an
inward law from God to the creature, from the things that are un-
seen and eternal to the things that are seen and temporal. It is in
its earliest manifestations, worldly, of the earth, earthy. As this
is the testimony of universal experience, so also it is the doc-
trine of the Bible. Job xi. 12, " Man " is " born like a wild ass's
colt." Ps. Iviii. 3, " The wicked are estranged from the womb ;
they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Prov. xxii.
15, " Foolishness (moral evil) is bound in the heart of a child."
These three undeniable facts, the universality of sin among men,
its controlling power, and its early manifestation, are clear proof of
the corruption of our common nature. It is a principle of judg-
ment universally recognized and acted upon, that a course of action
in any creature, rational or irrational, which is universal and con-
trolling, and which is adopted uniformly from the beginning of its
2B8 PART n. ch. vni. — sin.
being, determines and reveals its nature. That all individuals of
certain species of animals live on prey ; that all the individuals of
another species live on herbs ; that some ai*e amphibious, and others
live only on the land ; some are gregarious, others solitary ; some
mild and docile, others ferocious and untamable ; not under certain
circumstances and conditions, but always and everywhere, under
all the different circumstances of their being, is regarded as proof
of their natural constitution. It shows what they are by nature,
as distinguished from what they are, or may be made by external
circumstances and culture. The same principle is applied to our
judgments of men. Whatever is variable and limited in its man-
ifestations ; whatever is found in some men and not in others, we
attribute to peculiar and limited causes, but what is universal and
controlling is uniformly referred to the nature of man. Some of
these universally manifested modes of action among men are refer-
rible to the essential attinbutes of their nature, as reason and con-
science. The fact that all men perform rational actions is a clear
proof that they are rational creatures ; and the fact that they per-
form moral actions is proof that they have a moral nature. Other
universal modes of action are referred not to the essential attributes
of human nature, but to its present abiding state. That all men
seek ease and self-indulgence and prefer themselves to others, is not
to be attributed to our nature as men, but to our present state. As
the fact that all men perform moral actions is proof that they have
a moral nature, so the fact that such moral action is always evil, or
that all men sin from the earliest development of their powers, is a
proof that their moral nature is depraved. It is utterly inconsist-
ent with all just ideas of God that He created man with a nature
which with absolute uniformity leads him to sin and destruction ;
or that He placed him in circumstances which inevitably secure his
ruin. The present state of human nature cannot therefore be its
normal and original condition. We are a fallen race. Our nature
has become corrupted by our apostasy from God, and therefore
every imagination (z. «., every exercise) of the thoughts of man's
heart is only evil continually. See also Gen. viii. 21. This is the
Scriptural and the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of
the deep, universal, and early manifested sinfulness of men in all
ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.
Evasions of the Foregoing Arguments.
The methods adopted by those who deny the doctrine of original
sin, to accmmt for the universality of sin, are in the highest degree
unsatisfactory. ,
§13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 239
1. It is not necessary here to refer to the theories which get
over this great difficulty either by denying the existence of sin, or
by extenuating its evil nature, so that the difficulty ceases to exist.
If there be really no such evil as sin, there is no sin to account for.
But the fact of the existence of sin, of its universality and of its
power, is too palpable and too much a matter of consciousness to
admit of being denied or ignored.
2. Others contend that we have in the free agency of man a
sufficient solution of the universality of sin. Men can sin ; they
choose to sin, and no further reason for the fact need be demanded.
If Adam sinned without an antecedent corrupt nature, why, it is
asked, must corruption of nature be assumed to account for the
fact that other men sin ? A uniform effect, however, demands a
uniform cause. That a man can walk is no adequate reason why he
always walks in one direction. A man may exercise his faculties
to attain one object or another ; the fact that he does devote them
through a long life to the acquisition of wealth is not accounted for
by saying that he is a free agent. The question is, Why his free
agency is always exercised in one particular direction. The fact,
therefore, that men are free agents is no solution for the universal
sinfulness and total apostasy of our race from God.
3. Others seek in the order of development of the constituent
elements of our nature, an explanation of the fact in question.
We are so constituted that the sensuous faculties are called into
exercise before the higher powers of reason and conscience. The
former therefore attain an undue ascendency, and lead the child and
the man to obey the lower instincts of his nature, when he should
be guided by his higher faculties. But, in the first place, this is
altogether an inadequate conception of our hereditary depravity.
It does not consist exclusively or principally in the ascendency of
the flesh (in the limited sense of that word) over the Spirit. It is
a far deeper and more radical evil. It is spiritual death, according
to the express declarations of the Scriptures. And, in the second
place, it cannot be the normal condition of man that his natural
faculties should develop in such order as inevitably and universally
to lead to his moral degradation and ruin. And, in the third place,
this theory relieves no difficulties while it accounts for no facts. It
is as hard to reconcile with the justice and goodness of God that
men should be born with a nature so constituted as certainly to
lead them to sin, as that they should be born in a state of sin. It
denies any fiiir probation to the race. According to the Scriptures
and the doctrine of the Church, mankind had not only a fair but a
240 PART II. Ch. viii. — sin.
favourable probation in Adam, who stood for them in the maturity
and full perfection of his nature ; and with every facility, motive,
and consideration adapted to secure his fidelity. This is far easier
of belief than the assumption that God places the child in the first
dawn of reason on its probation for eternity, with a nature already
perverted, and under circumstances which in every case infallibly
lead to its destruction. The only solution therefore which at all
meets the case is the Scriptural doctrine that all mankind fell in
Adam's first transgression, and bearing the penalty of his sin, they
come into the world in a state of spiritual death, the evidence of
which is seen and felt in the universality, the controlling power,
and the early manifestation of sin.
The Scriptures expressly Teach the Doctrine.
The Scriptures not only indirectly teach the doctrine of original
sin, or of the hereditary, sinful corruption of our nature as de-
rived from Adam, by teaching, as we have seen, the universal and
total depravity of our race, but they directly assert the doctrine.
They not only teach expressly that men sin universally and from
the first dawn of their being, but they also assert that the heart of
man is evil. It is declared to be " Deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked : Who can know it ? " (Jer. xvii. 9.) " The
heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." (Eccl.
viii. 11.) Every imagination of the thoughts of his (man's) heart
is only evil." (Gen. vi. 5) ; or as it is in Gen. viii. 21, " The
imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." By heart in
Scriptural language is meant the man himself; the soul ; that
which is the seat and source of life. It is that which thinks, feels,
desires, and wills. It is that out of which good or evil thoughts,
desires, and purposes proceed. It never signifies a mere act, or a
transient state of the soul. It is that which is abiding, which de-
termines character. It bears the same relation to acts that the soil
does to its productions. As a good soil brings forth herbs suited
for man and beast, and an evil soil brings forth briars and thorns,
so we are told that the human heart (human nature in its present
state), is proved to be evil by the prolific crop of sins which it
everywhere and always produces. Still more distinctly is this
doctrine taught in Matt. vii. 16-19, where our Lord says that men
are known by their fruits. " Do men gather grapes of thorns, or
figs of thistles ? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good
fruit ; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree
cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth
§ 13.] ORIGINAL Sm. 241
good fruit." And again, in Matt. xii. 33, " Either make the tree
good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and liis fruit
corrupt : for the tree is known by his fruit." The very pith and
point of these instructions is, that moral acts are a revelation of
moral character. They do not constitute it, but simply manifest
what it is. The fruit of a tree reveals the nature of the tree. It
does not make that nature, but simply proves what it is. So in the
case of man, his moral exercises, his thoughts and feelings, as well
as his external acts, are determined by an internal cause. There
is something in the nature of the man distinct from his acts and
anterior to them, which determines his conduct (^i. e., all his con-
scious exercises), to be either good or evil. If men are universally
sinful, it is, according to our Lord's doctrine, proof positive that
their nature is evil ; as much so as corrupt fruit proves the tree
to be corrupt. When therefore the Scriptures assert that the heart
of man is " desperately wicked," they assert precisely what the
Church means when she asserts our nature to be depraved. Neither
the word, heart, nor nature, in such connections means substance
or essence, but natural disposition. The Avords express a quality
as distinguished from an essential attribute or property. Even
when we speak of the nature of a tree, we do not mean its essence,
but its quality. Something which can be modified or changed
without a change of substance. Thus our Lord speaks of making a
tree good, or making it evil. The explanation of the Scriptural
meaning of the word heart given above is confirmed by analogous
and synonymous forms of expression used in the Bible. What is
sometimes designated as an evil heart is called " the old man," " a
law of sin in our members," " the flesh," " the carnal mind," etc.
And on the other hand, what is called "a new heart," is called
"the new man," " a new creature" (or nature), "the law of the
Spirit," " the spiritual mind," etc. All these terms and phrases
designate what is inherent, immanent, and abiding, as opposed to
what is transient and voluntary. The former class of terms is used
to describe the nature of man before it is regenerated, and the
other to describe the change consequent on regeneration. The
Scriptures, therefore, in declaring the heart of man to be deceitful
and desperately wicked, and its imaginations or exercises to be onlv
evil continually, assert in direct terms the Church doctrine of orig-
inal sin.
The Psalmist also directly asserts this doctrine when he savs
(Ps. li. 5), " Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my
mother conceive me." In the preceding verses he had confessed
VOL. II. 16
242 PART n. Ch. viil — sin.
his actual sins ; and lie here humbles himself still more completely
before God by acknowledging his innate, hereditary depravity ;
a depravity which he did not regard as a mere weakness, or
inclination to evil, but which he pronounces iniquity and sin. To
this inherent, hereditary corruption he refers in the subsequent
parts of the Psalm as his chief burden from which he most earnestly
desired to be delivered. " Behold, thou desirest truth in the
inward parts ; and in the hidden part shalt thou make me to know
wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; wash me,
and I shall be whiter than snow Create in me a clean heart,
O God, and renew a right spirit within me." It was his inward
pai'ts, his interior nature, which had been shapen in iniquity and
conceived in sin, which he prayed might be purified and renewed.
The whole spirit of this Psalm and the connection in which the
words of the fifth verse occur, have constrained the great majority
of commentators and readers of the Scripture to recognize in this
passage a direct affirmation of the doctrine of original sin. Of
course no doctrine rests on any one isolated passage. What is
taught in one place is sure to be assumed or asserted in other places.
What David says of himself as born in sin is confirmed by other
representations of Scripture, which show that what was true of
him is no less true of all mankind. Thus (Job xiv. 4), " Who
can bring a clean thing out of an unclean." (xy. 14), " What
is man that he should be clean ? and he which is born of a woman,
that he should be righteous ? " Thus also our Lord says (John
iii. 6), " That which is born of the flesh is flesh." This clearly
means that. That which is born of corrupt parents is itself cor-
rupt ; and is corrupt in virtue of its descent or derivation. This
is plain, (1.) From the common usage of the word flesh in a
religious sense in the Scriptures, Besides the primary and sec-
ondary meanings of the word it is familiarly used in the Bible to
designate our fallen and corrupt nature. Hence to be " in the
flesh" is to be in a natural, unrenewed state; the works of the
flesh, are works springing from a corrupt nature ; to walk after the
flesh, is to live under the controlling influence of a sinful nature.
Hence to be carnal, or carnally minded, is to be corrupt, or, as
Paul explains it, sold under, a slave to sin. (2.) Because the flesh
is here opposed to the Spirit. " That which is born of the flesh is
flesli ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." As the latter
member of this verse undoubtedly means that. That which is derived
from the Holy Spirit is holy, or conformed to the nature of the
Holy 'Spirit; the former member must mean that. That which is
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 243
derived from an evil source is itself evil. A child born of fallen
parents derives from them a fallen, corrupt nature. (3.) This
interpretation is demanded by the context. Our Lord is assigning
the reason for the necessity of regeneration or spiritual birth. That
reason is, the derivation of a corrupt nature by our natural birth.
It is because we are born in sin that the renewing of the Holy
Ghost is universally and absolutely necessary to our salvation.
Another passage equally decisive is Eph. ii. 3 : " We also"
(t. e.f we Jews as well as the Gentiles) " were by nature the chil-
dren of wrath, even as others." Children of wrath, according to
a familiar Hebrew idiom, means the objects of wrath. We, says
the Apostle, as well as other men, are the objects of the divine
wrath. That is, under condemnation, justly exposed to his displeas-
ure. This exposure to the wrath of God, as He teaches, is not due
exclusively to our sinful conduct, it is the condition in which we
were born. We are bi/ nature the children of wrath. The word
nature in such forms of speech always stands opposed to what is
acquired, or superinduced, or to what is due to ah extra influence
or inward development. Paul says that he and Peter were by
nature Jews, i. e., they were Jews by birth, not by proselytism.
He says the Gentiles do by nature the things of the law ; i. e., in
virtue of their internal constitution, not by external instruction.
The gods of the heathen, he says, are by nature no gods. They
are such only in the opinions of men. In classic literature as in
ordinary language, to say that men are by nature proud, or cruel,
or just, always means that the predicate is due to them in virtue
of their natural constitution or condition, and not simply on account
of their conduct or acquired character. The dative ^uo-ct in this
passage does not mean on account of, because c^vo-t? means simply
nature, whether good or bad. Paul does not say directly that it is
"on account of our (corrupt) nature we are the children of wrath,"
which interpretation requires the idea expressed by the word
corrupt to be introduced into the text. He simply asserts that we
are the children of wrath by nature ; that is, as we were born.
We are born in a state of sin and condemnation. And this is
the Church doctrine of original sin. Our natural condition is not
merely a condition of physical weakness, or of proneness to sin, or
of subjection to evil dispositions, which, if cherished, become sinful ;
but we are born in a state of sin. Rueckert, a rationalistic commen-
tator, says in reference to this passage : ^ "It is perfectly evident,
from Rom. v. 12—20, that Paul was far from being opposed to the
1 Der Brief Pauli an die Epkeser. Leipzig, 1834:, p. 88.
244 PART n. Cn. VIII.— SIN.
view expressed in Ps. li. 7, that men are born sinners ; and as we
interpret for no system, so we will not attempt to deny that the
thought, ' We were born children of wrath,' i. e., such as we were
from our birth we were exposed to the divine wratli, is the true
sense of these words."
The Bible Represents Men as Spiritually Dead.
Another way in which the Scriptures clearly teach the doctrine
of original sin is to be found in the passages in which they describe
the natural state of man since the fall. Men, all men, men of eveiy
nation, of every age, and of every condition, are represented as spir-
itually dead. The natural man, man as he is by nature, is destitute
of the life of God, i. e., of spiritual life. His understanding is
darkness, so that he does not know or receive the things of God.
He is not susceptible of impression from the realities of the spirit-
ual world. He is as insensible to them as a dead man to the things
of this world. He is alienated from God, and utterly unable to
deliver himself from this state of corruption and misery. Those,
and those only, are represented as delivered from this state in which
men are born, who are renewed by the Holy Ghost; who are quick-
ened, or made alive by the power of God, and who are therefore
called spiritual as governed and actuated by a higher principle than
any which belongs to our fallen nature. " The natural man," says
the Apostle (that is, man as he is by nature), " receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him :
neither can he know them ; because they are spiritually discerned."
(1 Cor. ii. 14.) " You hath he quickened who were dead in
trespasses and sins;" and not only you Gentiles, but "even us."
when dead in sins, hath God " quickened together with Christ."
(Eph. ii. 1, 5.) The state of all men, Jews and Gentiles, prior to
regeneration, is declared to be a state of spiritual death. In Eph.
iv. 17, 18, this natural state of man is described by saying of the
heathen that they " walk in the vanity of their mind (i. e., in sin),
having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life
of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the
blindness of their heart." Man's natural state is one of darkness,
of Avhich the proximate effect is ignorance and obduracy, and
consequent alienation from God. It is true this is said of the
heathen, but the Apostle constantly teaches that what is true of
the heathen is no less true of the Jews ; for there is no difference,
since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. With
these few passages the whole tenour of the word of God agrees.
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 245
Human nature in its present state is always and everywhere
described as thus darkened and corrupted.
Argument from the Necessity of Redemption.
Another argument in support of the doctrine of original sin is
that the Bible everywhere teaches that all men need redemption
through the blood of Christ. The Scriptures know nothing of the
salvation of any of the human family otherwise than through the
redemption which is in Ciu'ist Jesus. This is so plainly the doctrine
of the Bible that it never has been questioned in the Christian
Church. Infants need redemption as well as adults, for they
also are included in the covenant of grace. But redemption, in
the Cinistian sense of the term, is deliverance through the blood of
Christ, from the power and consequences of sin. Christ came to
save sinners. He saves none but sinners. If He saves infants,
infants must be in a state of sin. There is no possibility of
avoiding this conclusion, except by denying one or the other of
the premises from which it is drawn. We must either deny
that infants are saved through Christ, which is such a thoroughly
anti-Christian sentiment, that it has scarcely ever been avowed
within the pale of the Church ; or we must deny that redemp-
tion, in the Christian sense of the term, includes deliverance from
sin. This is the ground taken by those who deny the doctrine
of original sin, and yet admit that infants are saved through Christ.
Tiiey hold that in their case redemption is merely preservation from
sin. For Christ's sake, or through his intervention, they are trans-
ferred to a state of being in which their nature develops in holiness.
In answer to this evasion it is enough to remark, (1.) That it is
contrary to the plain and universally received doctrine of the Bible
as to the nature of the work of Christ. (2.) That this view super-
sedes the necessity of redemption at all. The Bible, however,
clearly teaches that the death of Christ is absolutely necessary ;
that if there had been any other way in which men could be saved
Christ is dead in vain. (Gal. ii. 21 ; iii. 21.) But, according to
the doctrine in question, there is no necessity for his death. If
men are an unfallen, uncorrupted race, and if they can be preserv^ed
from sin by a mere change of their circumstances, why should there
be the costly array of remedial means, the incarnation, the sufferings
and death of the Eternal Son of God, for their salvation. It is per-
fectly plain that the whole Scriptural plan of redemption is founded
on the apostasy of the whole human race from God. It assumes
that men, all men, infants as well as adults, are in a state of sin
246 PART n. ch. vni. — sin.
and misery, from which none but a divine Saviour can deliver
them.
Argument from the Necessity of Regeneration.
This is still further plain from what the Scriptures teach con-
cerning the necessity of regeneration. By regeneration is meant
both in Scripture and in the language of the Church, the renewincr
of the Holy Ghost ; the change of heart or of nature effected bv
the power of the Spirit, by which the soul passes from a state of
spiritual death into a state of spiritual life. It is that chancre from
sin to holiness, M'hich our Lord pronounces absolutely essential to
salvation. Sinners only need regeneration. Infants need regen-
eration. Therefore infants are in a state of sin. The only point
in this argument which requires to be proved, is that infants need
regeneration in the sense above explained. This, however, hardly
admits of doubt. (1.) It is proved by the language of the Scrip-
tures which assert that all men must be born of the Spirit, in order
to enter the Kingdom of God. The expression used, is absolutely
universah It means every human being descended from Adam by
ordinary generation. No exception of class, tribe, character, or
age is made ; and we are not authorized to make any such ex-
ception. But besides, as remarked above, the reason assigned for
this necessity of the new birth, applies to infants as Avell as to
adults. All who are born of the flesh, and because tliey are thus
born, our Lord says, must be born again. (2.) Infants always
have been included with their parents in every revelation or enact-
ment of the covenant of grace. The promise to our first parents of
a Redeemer, concerned their children as well as themselves. The
covenant with Abraham was not only with him, but also with his
posterity, infant and adult. The covenant at Mount Sinai, which
as Pavil teaches, included the covenant of grace, was solemnly rat-
ified with the people and with their " little ones." The Scriptures,
therefore, always contemplate children from their birth as needing
to be saved, and as interested in the plan of salvation which it is
the great design of the Bible to reveal. (3.) Tin's is still further
evident from the fact that the sign and seal of the covenant of grace,
circumcision under the Old dispensation, and baptism under the
New, was applied to new-born infants. Circumcision was indeed
a sign and seal of the national covenant between God and the He-
brews as a nation. That is, it was a seal of those promises made
to Abraham, and afterwards through Moses, which related to the
external theocracy or Commonwealth of Israel. But nevertheless,
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 247
it is plain, that besides these national promises, there was also the
promise of redemption made to Abraham, which promise, the Apos-
tle expressly says, has come upon us. (Gal. iii. 14.) That is, we
(all believers) are included in the covenant made with Abraham.
It is no less plain tiiat circumcision was the sign and seal of that
covenant. This is clear, because the Apostle teaches that Abraham
received circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of faith. That
is, it was the seal of that covenant which promised and secured
righteousness on the condition of faith. It is also plain because
the Scriptures teach that circumcision had a spiritual import. It
signified inward purification. It was administered in order to
teach men that those who received the rite, needed such purifica-
tion, and that this great blessing was promised to those faithful to
the covenant, of which circumcision was the seal. Hence, the
Scriptures speak of the circumcision of the heart ; of an inward
circumcision effected by the Spirit as distinguished from that which
was outward in the flesh. Compare Deut. x. 16 ; xxx. 6 ; Ezek.
xliv. 7 ; Acts vii. 51 ; Rom. ii. 28. From all this it is clear that
circumcision could not be administered according to its divinely
constituted design to any who did not need the circumcision or
regeneration of heart, to fit them for the presence and service of
God. And as it was by divine command administered to infants
when eight days old, the conclusion is inevitable that in the sight
of God such infants need regeneration, and therefore are born in
sin.
The same argument obviously applies to infant baptism. Bap-
tism is an ordinance instituted by Christ, to signify and seal the
purification of tlie soul, by the sprinkling of his blood, and its regen-
eration by the Holy Ghost. It can therefore be properly adminis-
tered only to those who are in a state of guilt and pollution. It is,
however, administered to infants, and therefore infants are assumed
to need pardon and sanctification. This is the argument which
Pelagius and his followers, more than all others, found it most
difficult to answer. They could not deny the import of the rite.
They could not deny that it was properly administered to infants,
and yet they refused to admit the unavoidable conclusion, that in-
fants are born in sin. They were therefore driven to the unnat-
ural evasion, that baptism was administered to infants, not on the
ground of their present state, but on the assumption of their proba-
ble future condition. They were not sinners, but would probably
become such, and thus need the benefits of which baptism is the
sign and pledge. Even the Council of Trent found it necessary
248 PART n. Ch. VIII. — SIN.
to protest against such a manifest perversion of a solemn sacra-
ment, which reduced it to a mockery. The form of baptism as
prescribed by Christ, and universally adopted by the Church, sup-
poses that those to whom the sacrament is administered are sinners
and need the remission of sin and the renewal of the Holy Ghost.
Thus the doctrine of original sin is inwrought into the very tex-
ture of Christianity, and lies at the foundation of the institutions
of the gospel.
Argument from the Universality of Death.
Another decisive argument on this subject, is drawn from the
universality of death. Death, according to the Scriptures, is a
penal evil. It presupposes sin. No rational moi'al creature is
subject to death except on account of sin. Infants die, therefore
infants are the subjects of sin. The only way to evade this argu-
ment is to deny that death is a penal evil. This is the ground
taken by those who reject the doctrine of original sin. They as-
sert that it is a natural evil, flowing from the original constitution
of our nature, and that it is therefore no more a proof that all men
are sinners, than the death of brutes is a proof that they are sin-
ners. In answer to this objection, it is obvious to remark that men
are not brutes. That irrational animals, incapable of sin, are sub-
ject to death, is therefore no evidence that moral creatures may
be justly subject to the same evil, although free from sin. But, in
the second place, what is of far more weight, the objection is in
direct opposition to the declarations of the Word of God. Accord-
ing to the Bible, death in the case of man is a punishment. It was
threatened against Adam as the penalty of transgression. If he
had not sinned, neither had he died. The Apostle expressly de-
clares that death is the wages (or punishment) of sin ; and death is
on account of sin. (Rom. vi. 23 and v. 12.) He not only asserts
this as a fact, but assumes it as a principle, and makes it the foun-
dation of his whole argument in Rom. v. 12-20. His doctrine
as there stated is, where there is no law there is no sin. And
where there is no sin there is no punishment. All men are pun-
ished, therefore all men are sinners. That all men are punished,
he proves from the fact that all men die. Death is punishment.
Death, he says, reigned from Adam to Moses. It reigns even over
those who had not sinned in their own persons, by voluntary trans-
gression, as Adam did. It reigns over infants. It has passed ab-
solutely on all men because all are sinners. It cannot be ques-
tioned that such is the argument of the Apostle ; neither can it be
§ 13.] ORIGINAL sm. 249
questioned that this argument is founded on the assumption that
death, in the case of man, is a penal evil, and its infliction an un-
deniable proof of guilt. \¥e must, therefore, either reject the
authority of the Scriptures, or we must admit that the death of
infants is a proof of their sinfulness.
Although the Apostle's argument as above stated is a direct proof
of original sin (or inherent, hereditary corruption), it is no less a
proof, as urged on another occasion, of the imputation of Adam's
sin. Paul does argue, in Rom. v. 12—20, to prove that as in our
justification the righteousness on the ground of which we are ac-
cepted is not subjectively ours, but the righteousness of another,
even Christ ; so the primary ground of our condemnation to death
is the sin of Adam, something outside of ourselves, and not person-
ally ours. But it is to be borne in mind that the death of which
he speaks in accordance with the uniform usage of Scripture, in
such connections, is the death of a man ; a death appropriate to
his nature as a moral beino; formed in the imajre of God. The
death threatened to Adam was not the mere dissolution of his body,
but spiritual death, the loss of the life of God. The physical death
of infants is a patent proof that they are subject to the penalty
which came on men (which entered the world and passed on all
men) on account of one man, or by one man's disobedience. And
as that penalty was death spiritual as well as the dissolution of the
jbody, the death of infants is a Scriptural and decisive proof of their
being born destitute of original righteousness and infected with a
sinful corruption of nature. Their physical death is proof that they
are involved in the penalty the principal element of which is the
spiritual death of the soul. It was by the disobedience of one man
that all are constituted sinners, not only by imputation (which is
true and most important), but also by inherent depravity : as it is
by the obedience of one that all are constituted righteous, not only
by imputation (which also is true and vitally important), but also
by the consequent renewing of their nature flowing from their
reconciliation to God.
Argument from the Common Consent of Christians.
Finally, it is fair, on this subject, to appeal to the faith of the
Church universal. Protestants, in rejecting the doctrine of tradi-
tion, and in asserting that the Word of God as contained in the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only infallible
rule of faith and practice, do not reject the authority of the Church
as a teacher. They do not isolate themselves from the great com-
250 PART n. Ch. vni. — sin.
pany of the faithful in all ages, and set up a new faith. They hold
that Christ promised the Holy Spirit to lead his people into the
knowledge of the truth ; that the Spirit does dwell as a teacher in
all the children of God, and that tiiose who are born of God are
thus led to the knowledge and belief of the truth. There is there-
fore to the true Church, or tlie true people of God, but one faith, as
there is but one Lord and one God the Father of all. Any doctrine,
therefore, which can be proved to be a part of the faith (not of the
external and visible Church), but of the true children of God in all
ages of the world, must be true. It is to be received not because
it is thus universally believed, but because its being universally
believed by true Christians is a proof that it is taught by the Spirit
both in his Word and in the hearts of his people. This is a sound
principle recognized by all Protestants. This universal faith
of the Church is not to be sought so much in the decisions of
ecclesiastical councils, as in the formulas of devotion which have
prevailed among the people. It is, as often remarked, in the prayers,
in the hymnology, in the devotional writings which true believers
make the channel of their communion with God, and the medium
through which they express their most intimate religious convictions,
that we must look for the universal faith. From the faith of God's
people no man can separate himself without forfeiting the commun-
ion of saints, and placing himself outside of the pale of true believers.
If these things be admitted we must admit the doctrine of original,
sin. That doctrine has indeed been vai'iously explained, and in
many cases explained away by theologians and by councils, but
it is indelibly impressed on the faith of the true Church. It per-
vades the prayers, the worship, and the institutions of the Church.
All true Christians are convinced of sin ; they are convinced not
only of individual transgressions, but also of the depravity of their
heart and nature. They recognize this depravity as innate and
controlling. They groan under it as a grievous burden. They
know that they are by nature the children of wrath. Parents bring
their children to Christ to be washed by his blood and renewed by
his Spirit, as anxiously as mothers crowded around our Lord when
on earth, with their suffering infants that they might be healed by
his grace and power. Whatever difficulties, therefore, may attend
the doctrine of original sin, we must accept it as clearly taught in
the Scriptures, confirmed by the testimony of consciousness and
history, and sustained by the faith of the Church universal.
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 261
Objections.
The objections to this doctrine, it must be admitted, are many
and serious. But this is true of all the great doctrines of religion,
whether natural or revealed. Nor are such difficulties confined to
the sphere of religion. Our knowledge in every department is
limited, and in a great measure confined to isolated facts. We
know that a stone falls to the ground, that a seed germinates and
produces a plant after its own kind ; but it is absolutely impossible
for us to understand how these familiar effects are accomj)lished.
We know that God is, and that He governs all his creatures, but
we do not know how his effectual controlling agency is consistent
with the free agency of rational beings. We know that sin and
misery exist in the world, and we know that God is infinite in
power, holiness, and benevolence. How to reconcile the prevalence
of sin with the character of God we know not. These are familiar
and universally admitted facts as well in philosophy as in religion.
A thing may be, and often certainly is true, against which objections
may be urged which no man is able to answer. There are two
important practical principles which follow from the facts just men-
tioned. First, that it is not a sufficient or- a rational ground for
rejecting any well authenticated truth that we are not able to free
it from objections or difficulties. And, secondly, any objection
against a religious doctrine is to be regarded as sufficiently answered
if it can be shown to bear with equal force against an undeniable
fact. If the objection is not a rational reason for denying the fact
it is not a rational reason for rejecting the doctrine. This is the
method which the sacred writers adopt in vindicating truth.
It will be seen that almost all the objections against the doctrine
of original sin are in conflict with one or the other of the principles
just mentioned. Either they are addressed not to the evidences
of the truth of the doctrine whether derived from Scripture or from
experience, but to the difficulty of reconciling it with other truths ;
or these objections are insisted upon as fatal to the doctrine when
they obviously are as valid against the facts of providence as they
are against the teachings of Scripture.
The Objection that Men are Responsible only for their Voluntary
Acts.
1. The most obvious objection to the doctrine of original sin is
founded on the assumption that nothing can have moral character
except voluntary acts and the states of mind resulting from or pro-
252 PART u. ch. vm. — sen.
ducecl by our voluntary agency, and which are subject to the power
of the will. This objection rests on a principle which has already
been considered. It reaches very far. If it be sound, then there
can be no such thing as concreated holiness, or habitual grace, or
innate, inherent, or indwelling sin. But we have already seen,
when treating of the nature of sin, that according to the Scriptures,
the testimony of consciousness, and the universal judgment of men,
the moral character of dispositions depends on their nature and not
on their origin. Adam was holy, although so created. Saints are
holy, although regenerated and sanctified by the almighty power
of God. And therefore the soul is truly sinful if the subject of
sinful dispositions, although those dispositions should be innate and
entirely beyond the control of the will. Here it will be seen that
the objection is not against the Scriptural evidence of the doctrine
that men are born in sin, nor against the testimony of facts to the
truth of that doctrine ; but it is founded on the difficulty of recon-
ciling the doctrine of innate sin with certain assumed principles as
to the nature and grounds of moral obligation. Whether we can
refute those principles or not, does not affect the truth of the doc-
trine. We might as well deny all prophecy and all providence,
because we cannot reconcile the absolute control of free agents
with their liberty. If the assumed moral axiom that a man can be
responsible only for his own acts, conflicts with the facts of experi-
ence and the teachings of Scriptures, the rational course is to deny
the pretended axiom, and not to reject the facts with which it is in
conflict. The Bible, the Church, the mass of mankind, and the
conscience, hold a man responsible for his character, no matter how
that character was formed or whence it was derived ; and, therefore,
the doctrine of original sin is not in conflict with intuitive moral
truths.
Objection Founded on the Justice of Grod.
2. It is objected that it is inconsistent with the justice of God
that men should come into the world in a state of sin. In answer
to this objection it maybe remarked, (1.) That whatever God does
must be right. If He permits men to be born in sin, that fact must
be consistent with his divine perfection. (2.) It is a fact of expe-
rience no less than a doctrine of Scripture that men are either, as
the Church teaches, born in a state of sin and condemnation, or,
as all men must admit, in a state which inevitably leads to their
becoming sinful and miserable. The objection, tlierefore, bears
against a providential fact as much as against a Scriptural doctrine.
We must either deny God or admit that the existence and univer-
§ 13.] ORIGINAL SIN. 253
sality of sin among men is compatible with his nature and with his
government of the world. (3.) The Bible, as often before remarked,
accounts for and vindicates the corruption of our race on the ground
that mankind had a full and fair probation in Adam, and that the
spiritual death in which they are born is part of the judicial penalty
of his transgression. If we reject this solution of the fact, we cannot
deny the fact itself, and, being a fact, it must be consistent with the
character of God.
The Doctrine represents God as the Author of Sin.
3. A third objection often and confidently urged is, that the
Church doctrine on this subject makes God the author of sin.
God is the author of our nature. If our nature be sinful, God
must be the author of sin. The obvious fallacy of this syllogism
is, that the word nature is used in one sense in the major proposi-
tion, and in a different sense in the minor. In the one it means
substance or essence ; in the other, natural disposition. It is true
that God is the author of our essence. But our essence is not sin-
ful. God is indeed our Creator. He made us, and not we our-
selves. We are the work of his hands. He is the Father of the
spirits of all men. But He is not the author of the evil disposi-
tions with which that nature is infected at birth. The doctrine of
original sin attributes no efficiency to God in the production of evil.
It simply supposes that He judicially abandons our apostate race,
and withholds from the descendants of Adam the manifestations of
his favour and love, which are the life of the soul. That the in-
evitable consequence of this judicial abandonment is spiritual death,
no more makes God the author of sin, than the immorality and des-
perate and unchanging wickedness of the reprobate, from whom
God withholds his Spirit, are to be referred to the infinitely Holy
One as tlieir author. It is moreover a historical fact universally
admitted, that character, within certain limits, is transmissible from
parents to children. Every nation, separate tribe, and even every
extended family of men, has its physical, mental, social, and moral
peculiarities which are propagated from generation to generation.
No process of discipline or culture can transmute a Tatar into an
Englishman, or an Irishman into a Frenchman. The Bourbons,
the Hapsburgs, and other historical fiimilies, have retained and
transmitted their peculiarities for ages. We may be unable to ex-
plain this, but we cannot deny it. No one is born an absolute man,
with nothing but generic humanity belonging to him. Every one
is born a man in a definite state, with all those characteristics phys-
254 PART n. Ch. VIII. — sin.
ical, mental, and moral, which make iip his individuality. There
is nothing therefore in the doctrine of hereditary depravity out of
analogy with providential facts.
It is said to destroy the Free Agency of Men.
4. It is further objected to this doctrine that it destroys the free
agency of man. If we are born with a corrupt nature by which
we are inevitably determined to sinful acts, we cease to be free in
performing those acts, and consequently are not responsible for
them. This objection is founded on a particular theory of liberty,
and must stand or fall with it. The same objection is urged
against the doctrines of decrees, of efficacious grace, of the perse-
verance of the saints, and all other doctrines which assume that a
free act can be absolutely certain as to its occurrence. It is enough
here to remark that the doctrine of original sin supposes men to
have the same kind and degree of liberty in sinning under the in-
fluence of a corrupt nature, that saints and angels have in acting
rightly under the influence of a holy nature. To act according to
its nature is the only liberty which belongs to any created being.
§ 14. The Seat of Original Sin.
Having considered the nature of original sin, the next question
concerns its seat. According to one theory it is in the body. The
only evil effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity, which some theo-
logians admit, is the disorder of his physical nature, whereby undue
influence is secured to bodily appetites and passions. Scarcely dis-
tinguishable from this theory is the doctrine that the sensuous
nature of man, as distinguished from the reason and conscience, is
alone affected by our hereditary depravity. A third doctrine is,
that the heart, considered as the seat of the affections as distin-
guished from the understanding, is the seat of natural depravity.
This doctrine is connected with the idea that all sin and holiness
are forms of feeling or states of the affections. And it is made the
ground on which the nature of regeneration and conversion, the
relation between repentance and faitli, and other points of practical
theology are explained. Everything is made to depend on the in-
clinations or state of the feeling-s. Instead of the affections follow-
ing the understanding, the understanding, it is said, follows the
affections. A man understands and receives the truth only when
he loves it. Regeneration is simply a change in the state of the
affections, and the only inability under which sinners labour as to
the things of God, is disinclination. In opposition to all these doc-
§14.] THE SEAT OF ORIGINAL SIN. 255
trines Augustinianism, as held by the Lutheran and Reformed
Churches, teaciies that the whole man, soul and body, the higher
as well as the lower, the intellectual as well as the emotional facul-
ties of the soul, is affected by the corruption of our nature derived
from our first parents.
As the Scriptures speak of the body being sanctified in two
senses, first, as being consecrated to the service of God ; and sec-
ondly, as being in a normal condition in all its relati'ons to our spir-
itual nature, so as to be a fit instrument unto righteousness; and
also as a partaker of the benefits of redemption ; so also they rep-
resent the body as affected by the apostasy of our race. It is not
only employed in the service of sin or as an instrument to unright-
eousness ; but it is in every respect deteriorated. It is inordinate
in its cravings, rebellious, and hard to restrain. It is as the Apos-
tle says, the opposite of the glorious, spiritual body with which the
believer is hereafter to be invested.
The Whole Soul the Seat of Original Sin.
The theory that the affections (or, the heart in the limited sense
of that word), to the exclusion of the rational faculties, are alone
affected by original sin, is unscriptural, and the opposite doctrine
which makes the whole soul the subject of inherent corruption, is
the doctrine of the Bible, as appears, —
1. Because the Scriptures do not make the broad distinction be-
tween the understanding and the heart, which is commonly made
in our philosophy. They speak of " the thoughts of the heart,"
of " the intents of the heart," and of " the eyes of the heart," as
well as of its emotions and affections. The whole immaterial prin-
ciple is in the Bible designated as the soul, the spirit, the mind, the
heart. And therefore when it speaks of the heart, it means the
man, the self, that in which personal individuality resides. If the
heart be corrupt the whole soul in all its powers is corrupt.
2. The opposite doctrine assumes that there is nothing moral
in our cognitions or judgments ; that all knowledge is purely specu-
lative. Whereas, according to the Scriptui-e the chief sins of men
consist in their wrong judgments, in thinking and believing evil to
be good, and good to be evil. This in its highest form, as our Lord
teaches us, is the unpardonable sin, or blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost. It was because the Pharisees thought that Christ was evil,
that his works were the works of Satan, tliat He declared tliat they
could never be forgiven. It was because Paul could see no beauty
in Christ that he should desire Him, and because he verily thought
256 PART n. Ch. viu. — sm.
he was doing God service in persecuting believers, that he was,
and declared himself to be, the chief of sinners. It is, as the Bible
clearly reveals, because men are ignorant of God, and blind to
the manifestation of his glorj in the person of his Son, that they
are lost. On the other hand the highest form of moral excellence
consists in knowledge. To know God is eternal life. To know
Christ is to be like Christ. The world. He says, hath not known
me, but these (believers) have known me. True religion con-
sists in the knowledge of the Lord, and its universal prevalence
among men is predicted by saying, " All shall know Him from the
least unto the greatest." Throughout the Scriptures wisdom is
piety, the wise are the good ; folly is sin, and the foolish are the
wicked. Nothing can be more repugnant to the philosophy of the
Bible than the dissociation of moral character from knowledge ;
and nothing can be more at variance with our own consciousness.
We know that every affection in a rational creature includes an
exercise of the cognitive faculties ; and every exercise of our cog-
nitive faculties, in relation to moral and religious subjects, includes
the exercise of our moral nature.
3. A third argument on this subject is drawn from the fact that
the Bible represents the natural or unrenewed man as blind or
ignorant as to the things of the Spirit. It declares that he cannot
know them. And the fallen condition of human nature is repre-
sented as consisting primarily in this mental blindness. Men are
corrupt, says the Apostle, through the ignorance that is in them.
4. Conversion is said to consist in a translation from darkness to
light. God is said to open the eyes. The eyes of the understand-
ing (or heart) are said to be enlightened. All believers are de-
clared to be the subjects of a spiritual illumination. Paul describes
his own conversion by saying that, " God revealed his Son in him."
He opened his eyes to enable him to see that Jesus was the Son of
God, or God manifest in the flesh. He thereby became a new
creature, and his whole life was thenceforth devoted to the service
of Him, whom before he hated and persecuted.
0. Knowledcre is said to be the effect of regeneration. Men are
renewed so as to know. They are brought to the knowledge of
the truth ; and they are sanctified by the truth. From all these
ccnsiderations it is evident that the whole man is the subject of
original sin ; that our cognitive, as well as our emotional nature is
involved in the depravity consequent on our apostasy from God ;
that in knowing as well as in loving or in willing, we are under the
influence and dominion of sin.
§ 15.] INABILITY. 257
§ 15. Inability.
The third great point included in the Scriptural doctrine of origi-
nal sin, is the inability of fallen man in his natural state, of himself
to do anything spiritually good. This is necessarily included in
the idea of spiritual death. On this subject it is proposed : (1.) To
state the doctrine as presented in the symbols of the Protestant
churches. (2.) To explain the nature of the inability under which
the sinner is said to labour. (3.) To exhibit the Scriptural proofs
of the doctrine ; and (4.) To answer the objections usually urged
against it.
The Doctrine as stated in Protestant Symbols.
There have been three general views as to the ability of fallen
man, which have prevailed in the Church. The first, the Pelagian
doctrine, which asserts the plenary ability of sinners to do all that
God requires of them. The second is the Semi-Pelagian doctrine
(taking the word Semi-Pelagian in its wide and popular sense),
which admits the powers of man to have been weakened by the
fall of the race, but denies that he lost all ability to perform what
is spiritually good. And thirdly, the Augustinian or Protestant
doctrine which teaches that such is the nature of inherent, heredi-
tary depravity that men since the fall are utterly unable to turn
themselves unto God, or to do anything truly good in his sight.
With these three views of the ability of fallen men are connected
corresponding views of grace, or the influence and'operations of the
Holy Spirit in man's regeneration and conversion. Pelagians deny
the necessity of any supernatural influence of the Spirit in the
regeneration and sanctification of men. Semi-Pelagians admit the
necessity of such divine influence to assist the enfeebled powers of
man in the work of turning unto God, but claim that the sinner
cooperates in that work and that upon his voluntary cooperation the
issue depends. Augustinians and Protestants ascribe the whole
work of regeneration to the Spirit of God, the soul being passive
therein, the subject, and not the agent of the change ; although
active and cooperating in all the exercises of the divine life of
which it has been made the recipient.
The doctrine of the sinner's inability is thus stated in the sym-
bols of the Lutheran Church. The "Augsburg Confession "^
says : " Humana voluntas habet aliquam libertatem ad efficiendara
civilem justitiam et deligendas res rationi subjectas. Sed non habet
1 I. xviii.; Hase, LibH Symbolici, pp. 14, 15.
VOL. II. 17
258 PART 11. ch. vin. — sin.
vim sine Spiritu Sancto efficiendae justitise Dei, seu justitise spin'tu-
alis, quia animalis homo non pereepit ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei (1
Cor. ii. 14) ; sed liaec fit in cordibus, cum per verbum Spiritus Sanc-
tus concipitur. Ha3c totidem verbis dicit Augustinus ; ^ est, fate-
mur, liberum arbitrium omnibus hominibus ; habens quidem judic-
ium rationis, non per quod sit idoneum, quae ad Deum pertinent, sine
Deo aut inchoare ant certe peragere : sed tantum in operibus vitae
presentis, tarn bonis, quam etiam malis."
"Formula Concordite:"^ " Etsi humana ratio seu naturalis intel-
lectus hominis, obscuram aliquam notitias illius scintillulam reliquam
habet, quod sit Deus, et particulam aliquam legis tenet : tamen adeo
ignorans, coeca, et perversa est ratio ilia, ut ingeniosissimi homines
in hoc mundo evangelium de Filio Dei et promissiones divinas de
aeterna salute legant vel audiant, tamen ea propriis viribus percipere,
intelligere, credere et vera esse, statuere nequeant. Quin potius
quanto diligentius in ea re elaborant, ut spirituales res istas suae
rationis acumine indagent et comprehendant, tanto minus intelli-
gunt et credunt, et ea omnia pro stultitia et meris nugis et fabulis
habent, priusquam a Spiritu Sancto illuminentur et doceantur."
Again,^ '• Natura corrupta viribus suis coram Deo nihil aliud, nisi
peccare possit."
" SacrsB literae hominis non renati cor duro lapidi, qui ad tactum
non cedat, sed resistat, idem rudi trunco, interdum etiam ferae in
domitae comparant, non quod homo post lapsum non amplius sit
rationalis creatura, aut quod absque auditu et meditatione verbi
divini ad Deum convertatur, aut quod in rebus externis et civilibus
nihil boni aut mali intelligere possit, aut libera aliquid agere vel
omittere queat."*
" Antequam homo per Spiritum Sanctum illnminatur, converti-
tur, regeneratur et trahitur, ex sese, et propriis naturalibus suis
viribus in rebus spiritualibus, et ad conversionem aut regeneration-
em suam nihil inchoare, operari, aut cooperari potest, nee plus,
quam lapis, truncus, aut limus." ^
The doctrine of the Reformed churches is to the same effect.^
" Confessio Helvetica II. : " " Non sublatus est quidem homini in-
tellectus, non erepta ei voluntas, et prorsus in lapidem vel truncum
est commutatus : caterum ilia ita sunt Immutata et inminuta in
homine, ut non possint amplius, quod potuerunt ante lapsum. In-
1 Hypomnesticon, seu Hypognoaticon, lib. iii. iv. 5 ; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. x. p.
2209, a.
2 n. 9; Hase, p. 657. « i. 25; Ibid. p. 643.
< n. 19; Ibid. p. 661. 6 ii. 24; Ibid. p. 662.
• IX.; Niemeyer, Collectio QmfeMionum, p. 479.
§ 15.] INABILITY. 259
tellectus enim obsouratus est: voluntas vero ex libera, facta est
voluntas serva. Nam servit peccato, non nolens, sed volens.
Etenim voluntas, non noluntas dicitur
" Quantum vero ad bonuni et ad virtutes, Intellectus hominis,
non recte judlcat de divinis ex semetipso Constat vero
mentem vel intellectum ducem esse voluntatis, cum autem coecus
sit dux, claret quousque et voluntas pertingat. Proinde nullum est
ad bonum homini arbitrium liberum, nondum renato ; vires nullae
ad perficiendum bonum ^Cseterum nemo negat in externis,
et regenitos et non regenitos habere liberum arbitrium
Damnamus in hac causa Manichseos, qui negant homini bono, ex
libero arbitrio fuisse initium mali. Damnamus etiam Pelagianos,
qui dicunt hominem malum sufficienter habere liberum arbitrium,
ad faciendum prseceptum bonum."
"Confessio Gallicana:" " Etsi enim nonnullam habet boni et
mali discretionem : affirmamus tamen quicquid habet lucis mox fieri
tenebras, cum de quaerendo Deo agitur, adeo ut sua intelligentia et
ratione nullo modo possit ad eum accedere : item quamvis voluntate
sit prseditus, qua ad hoc vel illud movetur, tamen quum ea sit pen-
itus sub peccato captiva, nullam prorsus habet ad bonum appeten-
dum libertatem, nisi quam ex gratia et Dei dono acceperit." ^
" Articuli XXXIX : " " Ea est hominis post lapsum Adas con-
ditio, ut sese naturalibus suis viribus et bonis operibus ad fidem
et invocationem Dei convertere ac praeparare non possit. Quare
absque gratia Dei quae per Christum est nos praeveniente, ut veli-
mus et cooperante dum volumus, ad pietatis opera facienda, quas
Deo grata sunt ac accepta, nihil valemus."^
" Opera quae fiunt ante gratiam Christi, et Spiritus ejus afflatum,
cum ex fide Christi non prodeant minime Deo grata sunt
Immo, cum non sint facta ut Deus ilia fieri voluit et praecepit,
peccati rationem habere non dubitamus." *
" Canones Dordrechtanae," * *' Omnes homines in peccato con-
cipiuntur, et filii iras nascuntur, inepti ad omne bonum salutare,
propensi ad malum, in peccatis mortui, et peccati servi ; et absque
Spiritus Sancti regenerantis gratia, ad Deum redire, naturam
depravatam corrigere, vel ad ejus correctionem se disponere nee
volunt, nee possunt."
" Residuum quidem est post lapsum in homine lumen aliquod
naturae, cujus beneficio ille notitias quasdam de Deo, de rebus nat-
1 Niemeyer, p. 481. 2 jx ; Ibid. p. 33T
3 X.; Ibid. p. 603. * xiii.; Ibid. p. 604.
6 III. iii. ; loid. p. 709.
260 PART n. Ch. vm. — sm.
urallbus, de discrimine honestorum et turpium retinet, et aliquod
virtutis ac disciplinae externse studium ostendit : sed tantum abest,
ut hoc naturae lumine ad salutarem Dei cognitionem pervenire, et
ad eum se convertere possit, ut ne quidem eo in naturalibus ac
civilibus recte utatur, quinimo qualecumque id demum sit, id totum
variis modis contaminet atque in injustitiadetineat, quod dum facit,
coram Deo inexcusabilis redditur." ^
"Westminster Confession."^ Original sin is declared in sections
second and third to include the loss of original righteousness, and
a corrupted nature ; " whereby," in section fourth, it is declared,
" we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all
good, and wholly inclined to all evil."
" Their (believers') ability to do good works is not at all of
themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ." ^
Effectual calling " is of God's free and special grace alone, not
from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive
therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit,
he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the gi'ace
offered and conveyed in it."*
The Nature of the Sinner's Inability.
It appears from the authoritative statements of this doctrine, as
given in the standards of the Lutheran and Reformed churches,
that the inability under which man, since the fall, is said to labour,
does not arise : —
Inability does not arise from the Loss of any Faculty of the Soul.
1. From the loss of any faculty of his mind or of any original,
essential attribute of his nature. He retains his reason, will, and
conscience. He has the intellectual power of cognition, the power
of self-determination, and the faculty of discerning between moral
good and evil. His conscience, as the Apostle says, approves or
disapproves of his moral acts.
Nor from the Loss of Free-agency.
2. The doctrine of man's inability, therefore, does not assume
that man has ceased to be a free moral agent. He is free because
he determines his own acts. Every volition is an act of free self-
determination. He is a moral agent because he has the conscious-
ness of moral obligation, and whenever he sins he acts freely against
1 m. iv. ; Niemeyer. * Chapter vi.
3 Ibid. ch. XV. i. § 3. * Ibid. ch. x. § 2.
§ 15.] INABILITY. 261
the convictions of conscience or the precepts of the moral law. That
a man is in such a state that he uniformly prefers and chooses evil
instead of good, as do the fallen angels, is no more inconsistent with
his free moral agency than his being in such a state as that he pre-
fers and chooses good with the same uniformity that the holy
angels do.
Inability not mere Disinclination.
3. The inability of sinners, according to the above statement of
the doctrine, is not mere disinclination or aversion to what is good.
This disinclination exists, but it is not the ultimate fact. There
must be some cause or reason for it. As God and Christ are
infinitely lovely, the fact that sinners do not love them is not
accounted for by saying that they are not inclined to deliglit in
infinite excellence. That is only stating the same thing in different
words. If a man does not perceive the beauty of a work of art, or
of a Hterarj- production, it is no solution of the fact to say that he
has no inclination for such forms of beauty. Why is it that what
is beautiful m itself, and in the judgment of all competent judges,
is without form or comeliness in his eyes ? Why is it that the
supreme excellence of God, and all that makes Christ the chief
among ten thousand and the one altogether lovely in the sight of
saints and angels, awaken no corresponding feelings in the unre-
newed heart? The inability of the sinner, therefore, neither con-
sists in his disinclination to good nor does it arise exclusively from
that source.
It Arises from the Want of Spiritual Discernment.
4. According to the Scriptures and to the standards of doctrine
above quoted, it consists in the want of power riglitly to discern
spiritual things, and the consequent want of all right affections to-
ward them. And this want of power of spiritual discernment arises
from the corruption of our whole nature, by which the reason or
understanding is blinded, and the taste and feelings are perverted.
And as this state of mind is innate, as it is a state or condition of
our nature, it lies below the will, and is beyond its power, controlling
both our affections and our volitions. It is indeed a familiar fact
of experience that a man's judgments as to what is true or false,
right or wrong, are in many cases determined by his interests or
feelings. Some have, in their philosophy, generalized this fact into
a law, and teach that as to all aesthetic and moral subjects the
judgments and apprehensions of the understanding are determined
by the state of the feelings. In applying this law to the matters
262 PART 11. Ch. VIIL — sin.
of religion they insist that the affections only are the subject of
moral corruption, and that if these be purified or renewed, the
understanding then apprehends and judges rightly as a matter of
course. It would be easy to show that this, as a philosophical
theory, is altogether unsatisfactory. The affections suppose an
object. They can be excited only in view of an object. If we love
we must love something. Love is complacency and delight in the
thing loved, and of necessity supposes the apprehension of it as
good and desirable. It is clearly impossible that we should love
God unless we apprehend his nature and perfections; and therefore
to call love into exercise it is necessary that the mind should appre-
hend God as He really is. Otherwise the affection would be neither
rational nor holy. This, however, is of subordinate moment. The
philosophy of one man has no authority for other men. It is only
the philosophy of the Bible, that which is assumed or presupposed
in the doctrinal statements of the Word of God, to which we are
called upon unhesitatingly to submit. Everywhere in the Scriptures
it is asserted or assumed that the feelings follow the understanding ;
that the illumination of the mind in the due appi'ehension of spiritual
objects is the necessary preliminary condition of all right feeling
and conduct. We must know God in order to love Him. This is
distinctly asserted by the Apostle in 1 Cor. ii. 14. He there says,
(1.) That the natural or unrenewed man does not i-eceive the
things of the Spirit. (2.) The reason why he does not receive
them is declared to be that they are foolishness unto him, or that
he cannot know them, (o.) And the reason why he cannot know
them is that they are spiritually discerned. It is ignorance, the
want of discernment of the beauty, excellence, and suitableness of
the things of the Spirit (i. e., of the truths which the Spirit has
revealed), that is the reason or cause of unbelief. So also in Eph.
iv. 18, he says, The heathen (unconverted men) are " alienated
from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them." Hence
his frequent prayers for the illumination of his readers ; and the
suj)plication of the Psalmist that his eyes might be opened. Hence,
also, true conversion is said to be effected by a revelation. Paul
was instantaneously changed from a persecutor to a worshipper of
Christ, when it j^leased God to reveal his Son in him. Those who
perish are lost because the god of this world has blinded their eyes
so that they fail to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
It is in accordance with this principle that knowledge is essential to
holiness, that true religion and life everlasting are said to consist in
the knowledge of God (John xvii. 3) ; and that men are said to be
§ 15.] INABILITY. 263
saved and sanctified by the truth. It is therefore the clear doctrine
of the Bible that the inability of men does not consist in mere
disinclination or opposition of feeling to the things of God, but that
this disinclination or alienation, as the Apostle calls it, arises from
the blindness of their minds. We are not, however, to go to the
opposite extreme, and adopt what has been called the " light
system," which teaches that men are regenerated by light or
knowledge, and that all that is needed is that the eyes of the un-
derstanding should be opened. As the whole soul is the subject of
original sin the whole soul is the subject of regeneration. A blind
man cannot possibly rejoice in the beauties of nature or art until
his sight is restored. But, if uncultivated, the mere restoration of
sight will not give him the perception of beauty. His whole nature
must be refined and elevated. So also the whole nature of apostate
man must be renewed by the Holy Ghost ; then his eyes being
opened to the glory of God in Christ, he will rejoice in Him Avith
joy unspeakable and full of glory. But the illumination of the mind
is indispensable to holy feelings, and is their proximate cause. This
being the doctrine of the Bible, it follows that the sinner's disability
does not consist in mere disinclination to holiness.
Inahility Asserted only in Reference to the " Things of the Spirit.^''
5. This inability is asserted only in reference to " the things of
the Spirit." It is admitted in all the Confessions above quoted
that man since the fall has not only the liberty of choice or power
of self-determination, but also is able to perform moral acts, good as
well as evil. He can be kind and just, and fulfil his social duties
in a manner to secure the approbation of his fellow-men. It is not
meant that the state of mind in which these acts are performed, or
the motives by which they are determined, are such as to meet the
approbation of an infinitely holy God ; but simply that these acts,
as to the matter of them, are prescribed by the moral law. Theo-
logians, as we have seen, designate the class of acts as to which
fallen man retains his ability as '''•justitia civilis,^^ or " things
external." And the class as to which his inability is asserted is
designated as " the things of God," " the things of the Spirit,"
" things connected with salvation." The difference between these
two classes of acts, although it may not be easy to state it in words,
is universally recognized. There is an obvious difference between
morality and religion ; and between those religious affections of
reverence and gratitude which all men more or less experience,.
and true piety. The difference lies in the state of mind, the
264 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
motives, and the apprehension of the objects of these affections. It
is the difference between hoHness and mere natural feeling. What
the Bible and all the Confessions of the churches of the Reforma-
tion assert is, that man, since the fall, cannot change his own heart;
he cannot regenerate his soul ; he cannot repent with godly sorrow,
or exercise that faith which is unto salvation. He cannot, in short, I
put forth any holy exercise or perform any act in such a way as to
merit the approbation of God. Sin cleaves to all he does, and from
the dominion of sin he cannot free himself.
In one Sense this Inability is Natural.
6. This inability is natural in one familiar and important sense
of the word. It is not natural in the same sense that reason, will,
and conscience are natural. These constitute our nature, and with-
out them or any one of them, we should cease to be men. In the
second place, it is not natural as arising from the necessary limita-
tions of our nature and belonging to our original and normal con-
dition. It arises out of the nature of man as a creature that he
cannot create, and cannot produce any effect out of himself by a
mere volition. Adam in the state of perfection could not will a
stone to move, or a plant to grow. It is obvious that an inability
arising from either of the sources above mentioned, i. e., from the
want of any of the essential faculties of our nature, or from the
original and normal limitations of our being, involves freedom from
obligation. In this sense nothing is more true than that ability
limits obligation. No creature can justly be required to do what
surpasses his powers as a creature.
On the other hand, although the inability of sinners is not natu-
ral in either of tlie senses above stated, it is natural in the sense
that it arises out of the present state of his nature. It is natural
in the same sense as selfishness, pride, and worldly mindedness
are natural. It is not acquired, or super-induced by any ab extra
influence, but flows from the condition in which human nature
exists since the fall of Adam.
In another Sense it is Moral.
7. This inability, although natural in the sense just stated, is
nevertheless moral, inasmuch as it arises out of the moral state of
the soul, as it relates to moral action, and as it is removed by a
moral change, that is, by regeneration.
-/
§ 15.] INABILITY. 265
Objections to the Popular Distinction between Natural and Moral
Ability.
In this country much stress has been laid upon the distinction
between moral and natural ability. It has been regarded as one
of the great American improvements in theology, and as marking
an important advance in the science. It is asserted that man since)
the fall has natural ability to do all that is required of him, and on
this ground his responsibility is made to rest ; but it is admitted
that he is morally unable to turn unto God, or perfectly keep his
commandments. By this distinction, it is thought, we may save
the great principle that ability limits obligation, that a man cannot
be bound to do what he cannot do, and at the same time hold fast
the Scriptural doctrine which teaches that the sinner cannot of
himself repent or change his own heart. With regard to this dis-
tinction as it is commonly and popularly presented, it may be
remarked : —
1. That the terms natural and moral are not antithetical. A
thing may be at once natural and moral. The inability of the sin-
ner, as above remarked, although moral, Is in a most important
sense natural. And, therefore, it is erroneous to say, that it is
simply moral and not natural.
2. The terms are objectionable not only because they lack pre-
cision, but also because they are ambiguous. One man means by
natural ability nothing more than the possession of the attributes
^of reason, will, and conscience. Another means plenary power,
all that is requisite to produce a given effect. And this is the
proper meaning of the words. Ability Is the power to do. If a
man has the natural ability to love God, he has full power to love
Him. And if He has the power to love Him, he has all that is
requisite to call that love into exercise. As this is the proper
meaning of the terms, it is the meaning commonly attached to
them. Those who insist on the natural ability of the sinner, gen-
erally assert that he has full power, without divine assistance, to do
all that is required of him : to love God with all his soul and mind
and strength, and his neighbour as himself. All that stands in the
way of his thus doing is not an inability, but simply disinclination,
or the want of will. An ability which Is not adequate to the end
contemplated, is no ability. It Is therefore a serious objection to
the use of this distinction, as commonly made, that it involves a
great error. It asserts that the sinner is able to do what in fact he
cannot do.
266 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
3. It is a further objection to this mode of stating the doctrine
that it tends to embarrass or to deceive. It must embarrass the
people to be told that they can and cannot repent and believe.
One or the other of the two propositions, in the ordinary and
proper sense of the terms, must be false. And any esoteric or
metaphysical sense in which the theologian may attempt to i-econ-
cile them, the people will neither appreciate nor respect. It is a
much more serious objection that it tends to deceive men to tell
them that they can change their own hearts, can repent, and can
believe. This is not true, and every man's consciousness tells him.-^
that it is untrue. It is of no avail for the preacher to say that
all he means by ability is that men have all the faculties of rational
beings, and that those are the only faculties to be exercised in turn-
ing to God or in doing his will. We might as reasonably tell an
uneducated man that he can understand and appreciate the Iliad,
because he has all the ficulties which the scholar possesses. Still
less does it avail to say that the only difficulty is in the will. And
therefore when we say that men can love God, we mean that they
can love Him if they will. If the word will, be here taken in its
ordinary sense for the power of self-determination, the proposition
that a man can love God if he will, is not true ; for it is notorious
that the affections are not under the power of the will. If the
word be taken in a wide sense as including the affections, the prop-
osition is a truism. It amounts to saying, that we can love God if
we do love Him.
4. The distinction between natural and moral ability, as com
monly made, is unscriptural. It has already been admitted that
there is an obvious and very important distinction between an ina-
bility arising out of the limitations of our being as creatures, and
an inability arising out of the apostate state of our nature since the
fall of Adam. But this is not what is commonly meant by those
who assert the natural ability of men to do all that God requires of
them. They mean and expressly assert that man, as his nature!
now is, is perfectly able to change his own heart, to repent and\
lead a holy life ; that the only difficulty in the way of his so doing
is the want of inclination, controllable by his own power. It is
this representation which is unscriptural. The Scriptures never 1
thus address fallen men and assure them of their ability to delive^J
themselves from the power of sin.
5. The whole tendency and effect of this mode of statement are
injurious and dangerous. If a sinner must be convinced of his
guilt before he can trust in the righteousness of Christ for his jus-
§ 15.] INABILITY. 267
tification, he must be convinced of his helplessness before he can
look to God for deliverance. Those who are made to believe that
they can save themselves, are, in the divine administration, com-
monly left to their own resources.
In opposition therefore to the Pelagian doctrine of the sinner's
plenary ability, to the Semi-Pelagian or Arminian doctrine of what
is called " a gracious ability," that is, an ability granted to all wiio
hear the gospel by the common and sufficient grace of the Holy
Spirit, and to the doctrine that the only inability of the sinner is
his disinclination to good, Augustinians have ever taught that this t
inability is absolute and entire. It is natural as well as moral. It
is as complete, although different in kind, as the inability of the |
blind to see, of the deaf to liear, or of the dead to restore them- i
selves to lite.
Proof of the Doctrine.
1. The first and most obvious argument in support of the Au-
gustinia)! or Orthodox argument on this subject is the negative
one. That is, the fact that the Scriptures nowhere attribute to
fallen men ability to change their own hearts or to turn themselves
unto God. As their salvation depends on their regeneration, if
that work was within the compass of their own powers, it is incred-
ible that the Bible should never rest the obligation of effecting it
upon the sinner's ability. If he had the power to regenerate him-
self, we should expect to find the Scriptures affirming his possession
of this ability, and calling upon him to exercise it. It may indeed
be said that the very command to repent and believe implies the
possession of everything that is I'equisite to obedience to the com-
mand. It does imply that those to whom it is addressed are ra- | f^
tional creatures, capable of moral obligation, and that they ai'e free
moral agents. It implies nothing more. The command is nothing \
more than the authoritative declaration of what is obligatory upon__.
those to whom it is addressed. We are I'equired to be perfect as
our Father in heaven is perfect. The obligation is imperative and
constant. Yet no sane man can assert his own ability to make him-
self thus perfect. Notwithstanding therefore the repeated commands
given in the Bible to sinners to love God with all the heart, to
repent and believe the gospel, and live without sin, it remains true
that the Scriptures nowhere assert or recognize the ability of fallen
man to fulfil these requisitions of duty.
4
268 PART II. Ch. VIU. — sin.
Express Declarations of the Scriptures.
2. Besides this negative testimony of the Scriptures, we have
the repeated and explicit declarations of the Word of God on this
subject. Our Lord compares the relation between himself and his
people to that which ex'ists between the vine and its branches.
The point of analogy is the absolute dependence common to both
relations. " As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it
abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me
Without me ye can do nothing." (John xv. 4, 5.) We are here
taught that Christ is the only source of spiritual life ; that those
out of Him are destitute of that life and of all ability to produce
its appropriate fruits ; and even with regard to those who are in
Him, this ability is not of themselves, it is derived entirely from
Him. In like manner the Apostle asserts his insufficiency (or in-
ability) to do anything of himself. Our " sufficiency," he says,
" is of God." (2 Cor. iii. 5.) Christ tells the Jews (John vi. 44),
" No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me
draw him." This is not weakened or explained away by his say-
ing in another place, " Ye will not come to me that ye might have
life." The penitent and believing soul comes to Christ willingly.
He wills to come. But this does not imply that he can of himself
produce that willingness. The sinner wills not to come ; but that
does not prove that coming is in the power of his will. He cannot
have the will to come to the saving of his soul unless he has a true
sense of sin, and a proper apprehension of the person, the character
and the work of Christ, and right affi?ctions towards Plim. How
is he to get these ? Are all these complex states of mind, this
knowledge, these apprehensions, and these affections subject to the
imperative power of the will ? In Rom. viii. 7, the Apostle says,
" The carnal mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in
the flesh cannot please God." Those Avho are " in the flesh," are
distinguished from those who are " in the Spirit." The former are
the unrenewed, men who are in a state of nature, and of them it
is affirmed that they cannot please God. Faith is declared to be
the gift of God, and yet without faith, we are told it is impos-
sible that we should please God. (Heb. xi. 6.) In 1 Cor. ii.
14, it is said, " The natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can
he know them, because they are sj)iritnally discei-ncd." The nat-
ural man is distinguished from the spiritual man. The latter is
§ 15.] INABILITY. 269
one in whom the Holy Spirit is the principle of life and activity,
or, who is under the control of the Spirit ; the former is one who
is under the control of his own fallen nature, in whom there is no
principle of life and action but what belongs to him as a fallen
creature. Of such a man the Apostle asserts, first, that he does
not receive the things of the Spirit, that is, the truths which the
Spirit has revealed ; secondly, that they are foolishness to him ;
thirdly, that he cannot know them ; and fourthly, that the reason
of this inability is the want of spiritual discernment, that is, of
that apprehension of the nature and truth of divine things which
is due to the inward teaching or illumination of the Holy Ghost.
This passage therefore not only asserts the fact of the sinner's ina-
bility, but teaches the ground or source of it. It is no mere aver-
sion or disinclination, but the want of true knowledge. No man
can see the beauty of a work of art without aasthetic discernment ;
and no man, according to the Apostle, can see the truth and beauty
of spiritual things without spiritual discernment. Such is the con-
stant representation of Scripture. Men are everywhere spoken of
and regarded not only as guilty and polluted, but also as helpless.
Involved in the Doctrine of Original Sin.
3. The doctrine of the sinner's inability is involved in the Scrip-
tural doctrine of original sin. By the apostasy of man from God
he not only lost the divine image and favour, but sunk into a state
of spiritual death. The Bible and reason alike teach that God is
the life of the soul ; his favour, and communion with Him, are
essential not only to happiness but also to holiness. Those who are
under his wrath and curse and are banished from his presence, are
in outer darkness. They have no true knowledge, no desire after
fellowship with a Being who to them is a consuming fire. To the
Apostle it appears as the greatest absurdity and impossibility that a
soul out of favour with God should be holy. This is the funda-
mental idea of his doctrine of sanctification. Those who are under
the law are under the curse, and those who are under the curse are
-absolutely ruined. It is essential, therefore, to holiness that we
should be delivered from the law and restored to the favour of
God before any exercise of love or any act of true obedience can
be performed or experienced on our part. We are free from sin
only because we are not under the law, but under grace. The
whole of the sixth and seventh chapters of the Epistle to the
Romans is devoted to the development of this principle. To the
Apostle the doctrine that the sinner has ability of himself to return
270 PART n. ch. viu. — sin.
to God, to restore to his soul the image of God, and Hve a holy
life, must have appeared as thorough a rejection of his theory of
salvation as the doctrine that we are justified hy works. His
whole system is founded on the two principles that, being guilty,
we are condemned, and can be justified only on the ground of the
righteousness of Christ ; and, being spiritually dead, no objective
presentation of the truth, no authoritative declarations of the law,
no effort of our own can originate spiritual life, or call forth any
spiritual exercise. Being justified freely and restored to the divine
favour, we are then, and only then, able to bring forth fruit unto
God. " Ye are become dead to the law b}* the body of Christ ;
that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised
from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For
when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the
law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death.
But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein
we were held ; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not
in the oldness of the letter." (Rom. vii. 4—6.) This view of the
matter necessarily implies that the natural state of fallen men is
one of entire helplessness and inability. They are " utterly indis-
posed, disabled, and made opposite to all good." The Bible,
therefore, as we have already seen, uniformly represents men in
their natural state since the fall as blind, deaf, and spiritually dead;
from which state they can no more deliver themselves than one
born blind can open his own eyes, or one corrupting in the grave
can restore himself to life.
The Neees»ity of the SpirWs Influence.
4. The next argument on this subject is derived from what the
Scriptures teach of the necessity and nature of the Spirit's influence
in regeneration and sanctification. If any man will take a Greek
Concordance of the New Testament, and see how often the words
TLviVfia and To YLvivfia to ayiov are used by the sacred writers, he will
learn how prominent a part the Holy Spirit takes in saving men,
and how hopeless is the case of those who are left to themselves.
What the Scriptures clearly teach as to this point is, (1.) That the
Holy Spirit is the source of spiritual life and all its exercises ; that
without his supernatural influence we can no more perform holy
acts than a dead branch, or a branch separated from the vine can
produce fruit. (2.) That in the first instance (that is, in regen-
eration) the soul is the subject and not the asrent of the change
produced. The Spirit gives life, and then excites and guides all
§15.] INABILITY. 271
its operations ; just as in the natural world God gives sight to the
blind, and then light by which to see, and objects to be seen, and
guides and sustains all the exercises of the power of vision which
He has bestowed. (3.) That the nature of the influence by which
regeneration, which must precede all holy exercises, is produced,
precludes the possIblHty of preparation or cooperation on the part
of the sinner. Some effects are produced by natural causes, others
by the simple vohtion or immediate efficiency of God. To this
latter class belong creation, miracles, and regeneration. (4.) Hence
the effect produced is called a new creature, a resurrection, a new
birth. These representations are designed to teach the utter impo-
tence and entire dependence of the sinner. Salvation is not of him
that wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shovveth mercy,
and who works in us to will and to do according to his own good
pleasure. These are all points to be more fully discussed hereafter.
It Is enough in this argument to say that the doctrines of the Bible
concerning the absolute necessity of grace, or the supernatural
influence of the Spirit, and of the nature and effects of that influ-
ence, are entirely inconsistent with the doctrine that the sinner is
able of himself to perform any holy act.
The Argument from Experience.
5. This is a practical question. What a man is able to do is best
determined not by a priori reasoning, or by logical deductions from
the nature of his faculties, but by putting his ability to the test.
The thing to be done is to turn from sin to holiness ; to love God
perfectly and our neighbour as ourselves ; to perform evei'y duty
without defect or omission, and keep ourselves from all sin of
thought, word, or deed, of heart or life. Can any man do this ?
Does any man need argument to convince him that he cannot do
it? He knows two things as clearly and as surely as he knows his
own existence : first, that he is bound to be morally perfect, to
keep all God's commands, to have all right feelings in constant
exercise as the occasion calls for them, and to avoid all sin In feeling
as well as in act ; and, secondly, that he can no more do this than
he can raise the dead. The metaphysician may endeavour to prove
to the people that there is no external world, that matter Is thought;
and the metaphysician may believe it, but the people, whose faith
is determined by the Instincts and divinely constituted laws of their
nature, will retain their own intuitive convictions. In like manner
the metaphysical theologian may tell sinners that they can regen-
erate themselves, can repent and believe, and love God perfectly,
272 PART 11. Ch. vni. — sin.
and the theologian may, by a figure of speech, be said to believe it;
but the poor sinners know that it is not true. They have tried a
thousand times, and would give a thousand worlds could they
accomplish the work, and make themselves saints and heirs of
glory by a volition, or by the exercise of their own powers, whether
transient or protracted.
It is universally admitted, because a universal fact of conscious-
ness, that the feelings and affections are not under the control of
the will. No man can love what is hateful to him, or hate what he
delights in, by any exercise of his self-determining power. Hence
the philosophers, with Kant, pronounce the command to love, an
absurdity, as sceptics declare the command to believe, absurd. But
the foolishness of men is the wisdom of God. It is right that we
should be required to love God and believe his Word, whether the
exercise of love and faith be under the control of our will or not.
The only way by which this argument from the common conscious-
ness of men can be evaded, is by denying that feeling has any
moral character ; or by assuming that the demands of the law are
accommodated to the ability of the agent. If he cannot love
holiness, he is not bound to love it. If he cannot believe all the
gospel, he is required to believe only what he can believe, what he
can see to be true in the light of his own reason. Both these
assumptions, however, are contrary to the intuitive convictions of
all men, and to the express declarations of the Woi'd of God. All
men know that moral character attaches to feelings as well as to
purposes or volitions ; that benevolence as a feeling is right and
malice as a feeling is wrong. They know with equal certainty that
the demands of right are immutable, that the law of God cannot
lower itself to the measure of the power of fallen creatures. It
demands of them nothing that exceeds the limitations of their nature
as creatures; but it does require the full and constant, and therefore
perfect, exercise of those powers in the service of God and in accord-
ance with his will. And this is precisely what every fallen rational
human being is fully persuaded he cannot do. The conviction of
inability, therefore, is as universal and as indestructible as the belief
of existence, and all the sophisms of metaphysical theologians are as
impotent as the subtleties of the idealist or pantheist. Any man or\
set of men, any system of philosophy or of theology which attempts
to stem the great stream of human consciousness is certain to be
swept down into the abyss of oblivion or destruction. — '
§ 15.] INABILITY. 273
Conviction of tSin,
There is another aspect of this argument which deserves to be
considered. What is conviction of sin ? What are the experiences
of those vi^hom the Spirit of God brings under that conviction ?
The answer to these questions may be drawn from the Bible, as for
example the seventh chapter of the Epistle to tlie Romans, from
the records of the inward life of the people of God in all ages, and
from every believer's own religious experience. From all these
sources it may be proved that every soul truly convinced of sin is
brought to feel and acknowledge, (1.) That he is guilty in the
sight of God, and justly exposed to the sentence of his violated law.
(2.) That he is utterly polluted and defiled by sin ; that his thoughts,
feelings, and acts are not what conscience or the divine law can
approve; and that it is not separate, transient acts only by which he
is thus polluted, but also that his heart is not right, that sin exists in
him as a power or a law working in him all manner of evil. And,
(3.) That he can make no atonement for his guilt, and that he
cannot free himself from the power of sin ; so that he is forced to
cry out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the
body of this death ! This sense of utter helplessness, of absolute
inability, is as much and as universally an element of genuine con-
viction as a sense of guilt or the consciousness of defilement. It is
a great mercy that the theology of the heart is often better than
the theology of the head.
6. The testimony of every man's consciousness is confirmed by
the common consciousness of the Church and by the whole history
of our race. Appeal may be made with all confidence to the
prayers, hymns, and other devotional writings of the people of
God for proof that no conviction is more deeply impressed on the
hearts of all true Christians than that of their utter helplessness
and entire dependence upon the grace of God. They deplore their
inability to love their Redeemer, to keep themselves from sin, to
live a holv life in any degree adequate to their own convictions of
their obligations. Under this inability they humble themselves.
They never plead it as an excuse or palliation ; they recognize it
as the fruit and evidence of the corruption of their nature derived
as a sad inheritance from their first parents. They refer with one
voice, whatever there is of good in them, not to their own ability,
but to the Holy Spirit. Every one adopts as expressing the inmost
conviction of his heart, the language of the Apostle, " Not I, but
the grace of God which was with me." As this is the testimony
VOL. II. 18
-74 PART II. Ch. vm.— sin.
of the Church so also it is the testimony of all history. The world
furnishes no example of a self-regenerated man. No such man
exists or ever has existed ; and no man ever believed himself to
be regenerated by his own power. If what men can do is to be
determined by what men have done, it may safely be assumed that
no man can change his own heart, or bring himself to repentance
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. An ability which
has never in the thousands of millions of our race accomplished the
desired end, even if it existed, would not be worth contending for.
There is scarcely a single doctrine of the Scriptures either more
clearly taught or more abundantK^ confirmed by the common con-
sciousness of men, whether saints or sinners, than the doctrine that
fallen man is destitute of all ability to convert himself or to perform
any holy act until renewed by the almighty power of the Spirit
of God.
Objections.
1. The most obvious and plausible objection to this doctrine is
the old one so often considered already, namely, that it is incon-
sistent with moral obligation. A man, it is said, cannot be justly
required to do any thing for which he has not the requisite ability.
The fallacy of this objection lies in the application of this principle.
It is self-evidently true in one sphere, but utterly untrue in another.
It is true that the blind cannot justly be required to see, or the
deaf to hear. A child cannot be required to understand the calcu-
lus, or an uneducated man to read the classics. These things be-
long to the sphere of nature. The inability which thus limits obli-
gation arises out of the limitations which God has imposed on our
nature. The principle in question does not apply in the sphere of
morals and religion, when the inability arises not out of the limita-
tion, but out of the moral corruption of our nature. Even in the
sphere of religion there is a bound set to obligation by the capacity
of the agent. An infant cannot be expected or required to have
the measure of holy affections which fills the souls of the just made
perfect. It is only when inability arises from sin and is removed
by the removal of sin, that it is consistent with continued obliga-
tion. And as it has been shown from Scripture that the inability
of the sinner to repent and believe, to love God and to lead a holy
life, does not arise from the limitation of his nature as a creature
(as is the case with idiots or brutes) ; nor from the want of the
requisite faculties or capacity, but simply from the corruption of
our nature, it follows that it does not exonerate him from the obli-
gation to be and to do all that God requires. This, as shown above,
§15.] INABILITY. 275
is the doctrine of the Bible and is confirmed by the universal con-
sciousness of men, and especially by the experience of all the people
of God. They with one voice deplore their helplessness and their
perfect inability to live without sin, and yet acknowledge their obli-
gation to be perfectly holy.
"We are responsible for external acts, because they depend on
our volitions. We are responsible for our volitions because they
depend on our principles and feelings ; and we are responsible for
our feelings and for those states of mind which constitute character,
because (within the sphere of morals and religion) they are right
or wrong in their own nature. The fact that the affections and
permanent and even immanent states of the mind are beyond the
power of the will does not (as has been repeatedly shown in these
pages), remove them out of the sphere of moral obligation. As
this is attested by Scripture and by the general judgment of men,
the assumed axiom that ability limits obligation in the sphere of
morals cannot be admitted.
Moral obligation being founded upon the possession of the attrib-
utes of a moral agent, reason, conscience, and will, it remains un-
impaired so long as these attributes remain. If reason be lost all
responsibility for character or conduct ceases. If the consciousness
of the difference between right and wrong, the capacity to perceive
moral distinctions does not exist in a creature or does not belong
to its nature, that creature is not the subject of moral obligation ;
and in like manner if he is not an agent, is not invested with the
faculty of spontaneous activity as a personal being, he ceases, so
far as his conscious states are concerned, to be responsible for what
he is or does. Since the Scriptural and Augustinian doctrine ad-
mits that man since the fall retains his reason, conscience, and will,
it leaves the grounds of responsibility for character and conduct
unimpaired.
It does not weaken the Motives to Exertion.
2. Another popular objection to the Scriptural doctrine on this
subject is, that it destroys all rational grounds on which rests the
use of the means of grace. If we cannot accomplish a given end,
why should we use the means for its accomplishment ? So the
farmer might say, If I cannot secure a harvest, why should I culti-
vate my fields ? In every department of human activity the result
depends on the cooperation of causes over which man has no con-
trol. He is expected to use the means adapted to the desired end,
and trust for the cooperation of other agencies without which his
276 PART II. Ch. vin. — sin.
own efforts are of no avail. The Scriptural grounds on which we
are bound to use the means of grace are, (1.) The command of
God. This of itself is enough. If there were no apparent adapta-
tion of the means to the end, and no connection which we could
discover between them, the command of God would be a sufficient
reason and motive for their diligent use. There was no natural
adaptation in the waters of the Jordan to heal the leprosy, or in
those of the pool of Siloam to restore sight to the blind. It had,
however, been fatal folly on the part of Naaman to refuse on that
account to obey the command to bathe himself seven times ; and
in the blind man to refuse to wash in the pool as Jesus directed.
(2.) If the command of God is enough even when there is no appar-
ent connection between the means and the end, much more is it
enough when the means have a natural adaptation to the end. We
can see such adaptation in the department of nature, and it is no less
apparent in that of grace. There is an intimate connection between
truth and holiness, as between sowing the grain and reaping the
harvest. Man sows but God gives the increase in the one case as
well as in the other. (3.) There is not only this natural adapta-
tion of the means of grace to the end to be accomplished, but in all
ordinary cases, the end is not attained otherwise than through the
use of those means. Men are not saved without the truth. Those
who do not seek fail to find. Those who refuse to ask do not
receive. This is as much the ordinary course of the divine ad-
ministration in the kingdom of grace, as in the kingdom of nature.
(4.) There is not only this visible connection between the means
of grace and the salvation of the soul, as a fact of experience, but
the express promise of God that those who seek shall find, that
those who ask shall receive, and that to those who knock it shall be
opened. More than this cannot be rationally demanded. It is
more than is given to the men of the world to stimulate them in
their exertions to secure wealth or knowledge. The doctrine of
inability, therefore, does not impair the force of any of the motives
which should determine sinners to use all diligence in seeking their
own salvation in the way which God has appointed.
The Doctrine does not encourage Delay.
3. Still another objection is everywhere urged against this doc-
trine. It is said that it encourages delay. If a man believes that
he cannot change his heart, cannot repent and believe the gospel, he
will say, " I must wait God's time. As He gives men a new heart,
as faith and repentance are his gifts, I must wait until He is pleased
>
§ 15. J INABILITY. 277
to bestow those gifts on me." No doubt Satan does tempt men
thus to argue and tlius to act, as he tempts them in other ways to
egregious folly. The natural tendency of the doctrine in question,
however, is directly the reverse. When a man is convinced that
the attainment of a desirable end is beyond the compass of iiis own
powers, he instinctively seeks help out of himself. If ill, if he
knows he cannot cure himself, he sends for a ]>hysician. If per-
suaded that the disease is entirely under his own control, and
especially if any metaphysician could persuade him that all illness
is an idea, which can be banished by a volition, then it would be
folly in him to seek aid from abroad. The blind, the deaf, the
leprous, and the maimed who were on earth when Christ was
present in the flesh, knew that they could not heal themselves,
and therefore they went to Him for help. No more soul-destroy-
ing doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners
can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they
please. Those who really embrace such a doctrine would never
apply to the only source whence these blessings can in fact be
obtained. They would be led to defer to the last moment of life a
work which was entirely in their own hands and which could be
accomplished in a moment. A miser on his death-bed may by a
volition give away all his wealth. If a sinner could as easily change
his own heart, he would be apt to cleave to the world as the miser
to his wealth, till the last moment. All truth tends to godliness ;
all error to sin and death. As it is a truth both of Scripture and of
experience that the unrenewed man can do nothing of himself to
secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to a
practical conviction of that truth. When thus convinced, and
not before, he seeks help from the only source whence it can be
obtained.
CHAPTER IX.
FREE AGENCY.
In all discussions concerning sin and grace, the question con-
cerning the nature and necessary conditions of free agency is of
necessity involved. This is one of the points in which theology
and psychology come into immediate contact. There is a theory
of free agency with which the doctrines of original sin and of effi-
cacious grace are utterly irreconcilable, and there is another theory
with which those doctrines are perfectly consistent. In all ages of
the Church, therefore, those who have adopted the former of these
theories, reject those doctrines ; and, on the other hand, those who
are constrained to believe those doctrines, are no less constrained
to adopt the other and congenial theory of free agency. Pelagians,
Semi-Pelagians, and Remonstrants are not more notoriously at va-
riance with Augustinians, Lutherans, and Calvinists, on the doc-
trines of sin and grace, than they are on the metaphysical and
moral question of human liberty. In every system of theology,
therefore, there is a chapter De libera arhitrio. This is a question
which every theologian finds in his path, and which he must dis-
pose of; and on the manner in which it is determined depends his
theology, and of course his religion, so far as his theology is to him
a truth and reality.
It may seem preposterous to attempt, in the compass of a few
pages, the discussion of a question on which so many volumes have
been written. There is, however, this important difference between
all subjects whicii relate to the soul, or the world within, and those
which relate to the external workl : with regard to the former, all
the materials of knowledge being facts of consciousness, are already
in our possession ; whereas, in regard to the latter, the facts have
first to be collected. In questions, therefore, which relate to tiie
mind, a mere statement of the case is often all that is required, and
all that can be given. If that statement be correct, the facts of
consciousness spontaneously arrange themselves in order around it ;
if it be incorrect, they obstinately refuse to be thus marshalled. If
this be so, why is it that men difier so much about these questions ?
To this it may be answered, —
1. That they do not differ so much as they appear to. When
FREE AGENCY. 279
the mind is left undisturbed, and allowed to act according to its
own laws, men, in the great majority of cases, think alike on all
the great questions about which philosophers are divided. It is
only when they stir up the placid lake, and attempt to sound its
depths, to analyze its waters, to determine the laws of its currents,
and to ascertain its contents, that they see and think so differently.
However men may differ in their speculative opinions as to the
ultimate nature of matter, they all practically feel and act in the
same way in everything which concerns its application and use.
And however they may differ as to the question of liberty or ne-
cessity, they agree in regarding themselves and others as respon-
sible agents.
2. On no subject is the ambiguity of language a more serious
impediment, in the way of conscious agreement, than in reference
to this whole department, and especially in regard to the question
of free agency. Tbe same statement often appears tnie to one
mind and false to another, because it is understood differently,
Tiiis ambiguity arises partly from the inherent imperfection of
human language. Words have, and must have more than one
sense ; and although we may define our terms, and state in which
of its several senses we use a given word, yet the exigencies of
language, or inattention, almost unavoidably lead to its being em-
ployed in some other of its legitimate meanings. Besides, the
states of mind which these terms are employed to designate, are
themselves so complex that no words can accurately represent
them. We have terms to express the operations of the intellect,
others to designate the feelincjs, and others again for acts of the
will ; but thousands of our acts include the exercise of the intellect,
the sensibility, and the will, and it is absolutely impossible to find
words for all these complex and varying states of mind. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that men should misunderstand each other,
and fail in their most strenuous efforts to express what they mean
so that others shall attach precisely the same sense to the words
which they use.
3. There is another reason for the diversity of opinion which has
ever prevailed on all subjects connected with free agency. Al-
though the facts which should determine the questions discussed are
facts of consciousness common to all men, yet they are so numer-
ous, and of such different kinds, that it is hard to allow each its
due place and importance. From habit, or mental training, or
from the moral state of mind, some men allow too much weight to
one class of these facts, and too little to another. Some are gov-
280 PART II. Ch. IX.— free agency.
erned by their understanding, others by their moral feelings. In
some the moral sensibilities are much more lively and informing
than in othei's. Some adopt certain principles as axioms to which
they force all their judgments to conform. It is vain to hope,
therefox'e, that we shall ever find all men of one mind, on even the
plainest and most important questions relating to the constitution
and laws of their own nature. There is but one sure guide, and
but one path to either truth or unity, the Spirit and word of God ;
and happy are those who submit to be led by that guide, and to
walk in that path.
§ 1. Different Theories of the Will.
All the different theories of the will may be included under the
three classes of Necessity, Contingency, and Certainty.
Necessiti/.
To the first of these classes belong : —
1. The doctrine of Fatalism, which teaches that all events are
determined by a blind necessity. This necessity does not arise
from the will of an intelligent Being governing all his creatures
and all their acts according to their nature, and for purposes of wis-
dom and goodness ; but from a law of sequence to which God (or
rather the gods) as well as men is subject. It pi-ecludes tlie idea
of foresight or plan, or of the voluntary selection of an end, and
the adoption of means for its accomplishment. Things are as they
are, and must be as they are, and are to be, without any rational
cause. This theory ignores any distinction between physical laws
and free agency. The acts of men and the operations of nature
are determined by a necessity of the same kind. Events are like
a mighty stream borne onward by a resistless force, — a force out-
side of themselves, which cannot be controlled or modified. All
we have to do is to acquiesce in being thus carried on. Whether
we acquiesce or not makes no difference. A man falling from a
precipice cannot by an act of will counteract the force of gravity ;
neither can he in any way control or modify the action of fate.
His outward circumstances and inward acts are all equally deter-
mined by an inexorable law or influence residing out of himself.
This at least is one form of fatalism. This view of the doctrine of
necessity may rest on the assumption that the universe has the
ground of its existence in itself, and is governed in all its opera-
tions by fixed laws, which determine the sequence of all events in
the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdom, by a like necessity.
\
§ 1.] DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE WILL. 281
Or it may admit that the world owed its existence to an inteHigent
first cause, but assume that its author never designed to create free
agents, but determined to set in operation certain causes which
should work out given results. However fatalists may differ as to
the cause of the necessity which governs all events, they agree as
to its nature. It may arise from the influence of the stars, as the
ancient Chaldeans held ; or from the operation of second causes,
or from the original constitution of things ; or from the decree of
God. It avowedly precludes all liberty of action, and reduces the
acts of men to the same category with those of irrational animals.
Properly speaking, however, fatalism refers this necessity to fate,—
an unintelligent cause.
2. A second form of the doctrine of necessity, is the mechanical
theory. This denies that man is the efficient cause of his own acts.
It represents him as passive, or as endued with no higher form of
activity than spontaneity. It avowedly precludes the idea of re-
sponsibility. It assumes that the inward state of man, and conse-
quently his acts, are determined by his outward circumstances.
This doctrine as connected with the materialism of Hobbes, Hart-
ley, Priestley, Belsham, and especially as fully developed by the
French Encyclopaedists, supposes that from the constitution of our
nature, some things give us pain, others pleasure ; some excite de-
sire, and others aversion ; and that this susceptibility of being acted
upon is all the activity which belongs to man, who is as purely a
piece of living mechanism as the irrational animals. A certain ex-
ternal object produces a corresponding impression on the nerves,
that is transmitted to the brain, and an answering impulse is sent
back to the muscles ; or the effect is spent on the brain itself in the
form of thought or feeling thereby excited or evolved. The gen-
eral features of this theory are the same so far as its advocates
ignore any distinction between physical ■ and moral necessity, and
reject the doctrine of free agency and responsibility, however much
they may differ on other points.
3. A third form of necessity includes all those theories which
supersede the efficiency of second causes, by referring all events to
the immediate agency of the first cause. This of course is done
by Pantheism in all its forms, whether it merely makes God the
soul of the world, and refers all the operations of nature and all
the actions of men to his immediate agency ; or whether it regards
the world itself as God ; or whether it makes God the only sub-
stance of which nature and mind are the phenomena. According
to all these views, God is the only agent ; all activity is but differ-
ent modes in which the activity of God manifests itself.
282 PART n. Ch. IX. - FREE AGENCY.
The theory of occasional causes leads to the same result. Ac-
cording to this doctrine, all efficiency is in God. Second causes
are only the occasions on whicli that efficiency is exerted. Al-
though this system allows a real existence to matter and mind, and
admits that they are endowed with certain qualities and attributes,
yet these are nothing more than susceptibilities, or receptivities for
the manifestation of the divine efficiency. They furnish the occa-
sions for the exercise of the all-pervading power of God. Matter
and mind are alike passive : all the changes in the one, and all the
appearance of activity in the other, are due to God's immediate
operation.
Under the same head belongs the doctrine that the agency of
God in the preservation of the world is a continuous creation.
This mode of representation is indeed often adopted as a figure of
speech by orthodox theologians ; but if taken literally it implies the
absohite inefficiency of all second causes. If God creates the out-
ward world at every successive moment, He must be the immediate
author of all its clianges. There is no connection between what
precedes and what follows, between antecedent and consequent,
cause and effiict, but succession in time ; and when applied to the
inward world, or the soul, the same consequence of necessity fol-
lows. The soul, at any given moment, exists only in a certain
state ; if in that state it is created, then the creative energy is the
immediate cause of all its feelings, cognitions, and acts. The soul
is not an agent ; it is only something which God creates in a given
form. All continuity of being, all identity, and all efficiency are
lost ; and the universe of matter and mind becomes nothing more
than the continued pulsation of the life of God.
Nearly allied with the doctrine of a continued creation is the
"exercise scheme." According to this theory the soul is a series
of exercises created by God. There is no such thing as the soul,
no self, but only certain perceptions which succeed each other with
amazing rapidity. Hume denies any real cause. All we know is
that these perceptions exist, and exist in succession. Emmons says,
God creates them. It is of course in vain to speak of the liberty
of man in producing the creative acts of God. If He creates our
volitions in view of motives, they are his acts and not ours. The
diffi?rence between this system and Pantheism is little more than
nominal.
Contingency.
Directly opposed to all these schemes of necessity, is the doctrine
of contingency, which has been held under different names and
§].] DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE WILL. 283
variously modified. Sometimes it is called the liberty of indiffer-
ence ; by which is meant, that the will, at the moment of decision,
is self-poised among conflicting motives, and decides one way or
the other, not because of the greater influence of one motive over
others, but because it is indifferent or undetermined, able to act in
accordance with the weaker against the stronger motive, or even
without any motive at all. Sometimes this doctrine is expressed by
the phrase, self-determining power of the will. By this it is intended
to deny that the will is determined by motives, and to aflSrm that
the reason of its decisions is to be sought in itself. It is a cause
and not an effect, and therefore requires nothing out of itself to
account for its acts. Sometimes this doctrine is called the power
of contrary choice ; that is, that in every volition there is and must
be power to the contrary. Even supposing all antecedents exter-
nal and internal to have been precisely the same, the decision
might have been the reverse of what it actually was. Contingence
is therefore necessary to liberty. This is the essential idea of this
theory in all its forms. A contingent event is one which may or
may not happen. Contingence, therefore, is opposed not merely
to necessity, but also to certainty. If a man may act in opposition
to all motives, external and internal, and in despite of all influence
which can be exerted on him, short of destroying his liberty, then
it must forever remain uncertain how he will act. The advocates
of this theory of liberty, therefore, maintain, that the will is inde-
pendent of reason, of feeling, and of God. There is no middle
ground, they say, between contingency'' Qi. e., uncertainty), and
fatalism ; between the independence of the will and of the agent,
and the denial of all free agency.
Although the advocates of the liberty of contingency generally
direct their arguments against the doctrine of necessity, yet it is
apparent that they regard certainty no less than necessity to be
inconsistent with liberty. This is plain, (1.) From the designa-
tions which they give their theory, as liberty of indifference, self-
determining power of the will, power to the contrary. (2.) From
their formal definition of liberty, as the power to decide for or
against, or without motives ; or it is power of " willing what we
will." " If," says Reid, " in every voluntary action, the determi-
nation of his will be the necessary consequence of something in-
voluntary in the state of his mind, or of something in the external
circumstances of the agent, he is not free."i Cousin says, "The
1 Active Powers, Essay iv. ch. 1; Works, p. 599, Sir W. Hamilton'a edition, Edinburgh,
1849.
284 PART n. Ch. IX. — free agency.
will is mine, and I dispose absolutely of it witliin the limits of the
spiritual world." ^ The Scotists of the Middle Ages, Molina and
the Jesuits as a class, and all the opponents of Augustinianism,
define liberty as consisting in indifference, or in the independence
of the will of the preceding state of the mind, and make it to ex-
clude certainty no less than necessity. (3.) From the arguments '
by which they endeavour to sustain their theory, which are directed
as often against certainty as against necessity. (4.) From their
answers to opposing arguments, and especially to that derived from
the foreknowledge of God. As the foreknowledge of an act sup-
poses the certainty of its occurrence, if free acts are known, they
must be certain. To this the advocates of the theory in question
make such answers as show that certainty is what they are con-
tending against. They say that we have no right to argue on this
subject from the attributes of God ; it is a simple matter of con-
sciousness ; or they say, that God's foreknowledge may be limited,
just as his power is limited by impossibilities. If it be impossible
to foreknow free acts, they are not the objects of knowledge, and,
therefore, not to foreknow them is not a limitation of the divine
knowledge. From these and other considerations, it is plain that
the theory of contingenc}' in all its forms, is opposed to the doctrine
of certainty no less than to that of necessity, in the proper sense of
that term. By this, however, it is not meant that the advocates
of contingency are consistent as to this point. Arguing against
necessity, they frequently do not discriminate between physical
and moral necessity. They class Hobbes, Hartley, Priestley,
Belsham, Collins, Edwards, the French Encyclopaedists, and all
who use the word necessity, under the same category ; and yet
they cannot avoid admitting, that in many cases free acts may be
certain. They very often say that particular arguments prove
certainty but not necessity ; when certainty is precisely the thing
contended for, and which they themselves deny. This is one of
the unavoidable inconsistencies of error. No one, however, not-
withstanding these admissions, will dispute that the theory of con-
tingence, whether called indifference, self-determining power of the
will, power of contrary choice, or by any other name, is in fact,
and is intended to be, antagonistic to that of certainty.
Certainty.
The third general theory on this subject is separated by an
equal distance from the doctrine of necessity on tlie one hand, and
1 Elements of Psychology, p. 357, Henry's translation, 4tli edit., New York, 1856.
§ 1.] DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE WILL. 285
from that of contingency on the other. It teaches that a man is
free not only when his outward acts are determined by his will, but
when his volitions are truly and properly his own, determined by
nothing out of himself but proceeding from his own views, feelings,
and immanent dispositions, so that they are the real, intelligent,
and conscious expression of his character, or of what is in his mind.
This theory is often called the theory of moral or philosophical,
as distinguished from physical, necessity. This is a most unfortu-
nate and unsuitable designation. (1.) Because liberty and necessity
are directly opposed. It is a contradiction to say that an act is free
and yet necessary ; that man is a free agent, and yet that all his
acts are determined by a law of necessity. As all the advocates
of the theory in question profess to believe in the freedom of the
human will, or that man is a free agent, it is certainly to be regret-
ted that they should use language which in its ordinary and proper
sense teaches directly the reverse. (2.) Certainty and necessity
are not the same, and therefore they should not be expressed by
the same word. The necessity with which a stone falls to the
ground, and the certainty with Avhich a perfectly holy being con-
firmed in a state of grace will act holily, are as different as day and
night. Applying the same term to express things essentially distinct
tends to confound the things themselves. A man may be forced to
do a thing against his will, but to say he can be forced to will against
his will is a contradiction. A necessary volition is no volition, any
more than white is black. Because in popular language we often
speak of a thing as necessary when it is absolutely certain, and
although the Scriptures, written in the language of ordinary life,
often do the same thing, is no reason why in philosophical discussions
the word should be so used as unavoidably to mislead. (3.) Using
the word necessity to express the idea of certainty brings the truth
into reproach. It clothes it in the garb of error. It makes Edwards
use the language of Hobbes. It puts Luther into the category with
Spinoza ; all Augustinians into the same class with the French ma-
terialists. They all use the same language, though their meaning
is as diverse as possible. They all say that the acts of men are
necessary. When they come to explain themselves, the one class
says they are truly and properly necessary in such a sense that
they are not free, and that they preclude the possibility of moral
character or responsibility. The other class say that they are
necessary, but in such a sense as to be nevertheless free and per-
fectly consistent with the moral responsibility of the agent. It is
certainly a great evil that theories diametrically opposed to each
286 PART 11. Ch. IX. -free agency.
otlier, that the doctrine of saints, and the doctrine of devils (to use
Paul's language) should be expressed in the same words. We
accordingly find the most respectable writers, as Reid and Stewart,
arguing against Edwards as though he held the doctrine of
Belsham.
By the old Latin writers the theory of moral certainty is com-
monly designated Luhentia Rationalise or Rational Spontaneity.
This is a much more appropriate designation. It implies that in
every volition there are the elements of rationality and spontaneous
action. In brutes there is a spontaneity but no reason, and there-
fore they are not free agents in such a sense as to be the objects
of approbation or disapprobation. In maniacs also there is self-
determination, but it is irrational, and therefore not free. But
wherever reason and the power of self-determination or spontaneity
are combined in an agent, he is free and responsible for his outward
acts and for his volitions. This representation would satisfy Reid,
who says, " We see evidently that, as reason without active power
can do nothing, so active power without reason has no guide to
direct it to any end. These two conjoined make moral liberty." ^
The old writers, in developing their doctrine of rational spon-
taneity were accustomed to say, the will is determined by the last
judgment of the understanding. This is true or false as the lan-
guage is interpreted. If by the last judgment of the understanding
be meant the intellectual apprehension and conviction of the rea-
sonableness and excellence of the object of choice, then none but
the perfectly reasonable and good are always thus determined.
Men in a multitude of cases choose that which their understanding
condemns as wicked, trifling, or destructive. Or if the meaning
be that every free act is the result of conscious deliberation, and
consequent decision of the mind as to the desirableness of a given
act, then again it cannot be said that the will follows the last dictate
of the understanding. It is in reference probably to one or both
of these interpretations of the language in question that Leibnitz
says: "Non semper sequimur judicium ultimum intellectus practici,
dum ad volendum nos determinamus ; at ubi volumus, semper se-
quimur collectionem omnium inclinationum, tarn a parte rationum,
tam passionum, profectarum ; id quod saepenumero sine express©
intellectus judicio contingit.''^ But what is really meant by this
expression is that the views or feelings which determine the will
are themselves determined by the understanding. If I desire any-
1 Active Potcers, Essay iv. ch. 5; Works, Edinburgh, 3 849, p. 61?)
2 Wofks, edit, (itiieva, 1708, vol. i. p. 156.
§1.] DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE WILL. 287
thing, it is because I apprehend it as suitable to satisfy some
craving of my nature. If I will anything because it is right, its
being right is something for the understanding to discern. In other
words, all the desires, affections, or feelings which determine the
will to act must have an object, and that object by which the feeling
is excited and towards which it tends, must be discerned by the
understanding. It is this that gives them their rational character,
and renders the determinations of the will rational. Any volition
which does not follow the last dictate of the understanding, in this
sense of the words, is the act of an idiot. It may be spontaneous,
just as the acts of brutes are, but it cannot be free in the sense of
being the act of an accountable person.
Another form under which this doctrine is often expressed is,
that the will is as the greatest apparent good. This is a very
common mode of stating the doctrine, derived from Leibnitz, the
father of optimism, whose whole " Theodic^e " is founded on the
assumption that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good.
By " good," writers of this class generally mean " adapted to pro-
duce happiness," which is regarded as the summum honum. Their
doctrine is that the will always decides in favour of what promises
the greatest happiness. It is not the greatest real, but the greatest
apparent good which is said to determine the volition. A single
draught from the bowl may appear to the drunkard, in the intensity
of his craving, a greater good, ^. e., as better suited to relieve and
satisfy him, than the welfare of himself or family for life. This
whole theory is founded on the assimiption that happiness is the
highest end, and that the desire of happiness is the ultimate spring
of all voluntary action. As both of these principles are abhorrent
to the great mass of cultivated, and especially of Christian minds ;
as men act from other and higher motives than a desire to promote
their own happiness, there are few who, in our day, will adopt the
doctrine that the will is as the greatest apparent good, as thus
expounded. If, however, the word good be taken in a more com-
prehensive sense, including everything that is desirable, whether
as right, becoming, or useful, as well as suited to give happiness,
then the doctrine is no doubt true. The will in point of fact always
is determined in favour of that which under some aspect, or for
some reason, is regarded as good. Otherwise men might choose
evil as evil, which would violate a fundamental law of all rational
and sensuous natures.
It is still more common, at least in this country, to say that the
will is always determined by the strongest motive. To this mode
288 PART 11. Ch. IX. — free agency.
of statement there are two obvious objections. (1.) The ambiguity
of the word motive. If that word be taken in one sense, the state-
ment is true; if taken in anotlier, it is false. (2.) The impossibility
of establishing any test of the relative strength of motives. If you
make vivacity of feeling the test, then it is not true that the strong-
est motive always prevails. If you make the effect the test, then
you say that the strongest motive is that which determines the
will, — which amounts to saying that the will is determined by
that which determines it.
It is better to abide by the general statement. The will is not
determined by any law of necessity ; it is not independent, indiffer-
ent, or self-determined, but is always determined by the preceding
state of mind ; so that a man is free so long as his volitions are the
conscious expression of his own mind ; or so long as his activity is
determined and controlled by his reason and feelings.
§ 2. Definition of Terms.
Before proceeding to give an outline of the usual arguments in
support of this doctrine, it is important to state the meaning of the
words employed. No one in the least conversant with discussions
of this nature can liave failed to remark how much difficulty arises
from the ambiguity of the terms employed, and how often men
appear to differ in doctrine, Avhen in fact they only differ in
language.
The Will.
First, the word will itself is one of those ambiguous terms. It
is sometimes used in a wide sense, so as to include all the desires,
affections, and even emotions. It has this comprehensive sense
when all the faculties of the soul ai'e said to be included under the
two categories of understanding and will. Everything, therefore,
pertaining to the soul, that does not belong to the former, is said to
belong to the latter. All liking and disliking, all preferring, all
inclination and disinclination, are in this sense acts of the will. At
other times, the word is used for the power of self-determination,
or for that faculty by which we decide on our acts. In this sense
only purposes and imperative volitions are acts of the will. It is
obvious that if a writer affirms the liberty of the will in the latter
sense, and his reader takes the word in the former, the one can
never understand the other. Or if the same writer sometimes uses
the word in its wide and sometimes in its narrow sense, he will
inevitably mislead himself and others. To say that we have power
over our volitions, and to say that we have power over our desires,
§2.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 289
are entirely different things. One of these propositions may be
affirmed and the other denied ; bnt if will and desire are confounded
the distinction between these propositions is obliterated. It has often
been remarked that the confusion of these two meanings of the
word will is the great defect of President Edwards's celebrated
work. He starts with a definition of the term, which makes it
include all preferring, choosing, being pleased or displeased with,
liking and disliking, and advocates a theory which is true, and
applicable only to the will in the restricted sense of the word.
Motive.
Secondly, The word motive is often taken in different senses.
It is defined to be anything which has a tendency to move the
mind. Any object adapted to awaken desire or affection ; any
truth or conception which is suited to influence a rational and sen-
sitive being to a decision, is said to be a motive. This is what is
called the objective sense of the word. In this sense it is very far
from being true that the will is always determined by the strongest
motive. The most important truths, the most weighty considera-
tions, the most alluring objects, are often powerless, so far as the
internal state of the mind is concerned. The word, however, is
often used in a subjective sense, for those inward convictions, feel-
ings, inclinations, and principles which are in the mind itself, and
which impel or influence the man to decide one way rather than
another. It is only in this sense of the term that the will is deter-
mined by the strongest motive. But even then it must be admit-
ted, as before remarked, that we have no criterion or standard by
which to determine the relative strength of motives, other than
their actual effect. So that to say that the will is determined by
the strongest motive, only means that it is not self-determined, but
that in every rational volition the man is influenced to decide one
way rather than another, by something within him, so that the voli-
tion is a revelation of what he himself is.
Cau8e.
Thirdly, The word cause is no less ambiguous. It sometimes
means the mere occasion ; sometimes the instrument by which
something is accomplished ; sometimes the efficiency to which the
effect is due ; sometimes the end for which a thing is done, as when
we speak of final causes ; sometimes the ground or reason why the
effect or action of the efficient cause is so rather than otherwise.
To say that motives are the occasional, causes of volition, is consist-
VOL. II. 19
290 PART n. Cn. IX. — FREE AGENCY.
ent with any theory of agency, whether of necessity or indiffer-
ence ; to say that they are efficient causes, is to transfer the effi-
ciency of the agent to the motives; but to say that tliey are tlie
ground or reason why the vohtions are what they are, is only to
say that every rational being, in every voluntary act, must have a
reason, good or bad, for acting as he does. Most of the arguments
against the statement that motives are the cause of volitions, are
founded on the assumption that they are affirmed to be produc-
ing causes, and that it is intended to deny that the agent is the
efficient cause of his own acts ; whereas, the meaning simply is
that motives are the reasons which determine the ajjent to as-
sert his efficiency in one way rather than another. They are,
however, truly causes, in so far as they determine the effect to be
thus, and not otherwise. Parental love may induce a mother to
watch by a sick child, and in this sense is the cause of her devo-
tion, but she is none the less the efficient cause of all her acts of
tenderness. Reid says, " either the man is the cause of the action,
and then it is a free action, and is justly imputed to him, or it must
have another cause, and cannot justly be imputed to the man." i
This supposes that the word cause has but one sense. In the case
just supposed, the mother is the efficient, her love the rational
cause or reason of her acts. Is it a denial of her free agency to
say that her love determined her will in favour of attention instead
of neglect?
Liberty.
Fourthly, No little ambiguity aries from confounding liberty of
the will with liberty of the agent. These forms of expression are
often used as equivalent. The same thing is perhaps commonly
intended by saying, " The will is free," and " The agent is free."
It is admitted that the same thought may be properly expressed by
these phrases. As w^e speak of freedom of conscience, when we
mean to say that the man is free as to his conscience ; so we may
speak of freedom of the will, when all we mean is, that the man is
free in willing. The usage, however, which makes these expres-
sions synonymous is liable to the following objections : (1.) Predi-
cating liberty of the will is apt to lead to our conceiving of the will
as separated from the agent ; as a distinct self-acting power in the
soul. Or, if this extreme be avoided, which is not always the case,
the will is regarded as too much detached from the other faculties
of the soul, and as out of sympathy with it in its varying states.
The will is only the soul willing. The soul is of course a unit. A
I Active Powers, Essay iv. ch. ix. ; Works, Edinburgh, 1849, p. 625.
§ 2.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 291
self-determination is a determination of the will, and whatever
leads to a self-decision leads to a decision of the will. (2.) A sec-
ond objection to confounding these expressions is, that they are not
really equivalent. The man may be free, when his will is in bond-
age. It is a correct and established usage of language, expressive of
a real fact of consciousness, to speak of an enslaved will in a free
agent. This is not a mere metaphor, but a philosophical truth.
He that commits sin is the servant of sin. Long-continued mental
or bodily habits may bring the will into bondage, while the man
continues a free agent. A man who has been for years a miser,
has his will in a state of slavery, yet the man is perfectly free. He
is self-controlled, self-determined. His avarice is himself. It is
his own darling, cherished feeling. (3.) There is no use to have
two expressions for the same thing ; the one appropriate, the other
ambiguous. What we really mean is, that the agent is free. That
is the only point to which any interest is attached. The man is
the responsible subject. If he be free so as to be justly account-
able for his character and conduct, it matters not what are the laws
which determine the operations of his reason, conscience, or will ;
or whether liberty can be predicated of either of those faculties
separately considered. We maintain that the man is free ; but we
deny that the will is free in the sense of being independent of rea-
son, conscience, and feeling. In other words, a man cannot be
independent of himself, or any one of his faculties independent of
all the rest.
Liberty and Ability.
Fifthly, Another fruitful source of confusion on this subject, is
confounding liberty with ability. The usage which attaches the
same meaning to these terms is very ancient. Augustine denied
free will to man since the fall. Pelagius affirmed freedom of will
to be essential to our nature. The former intended simply to deny
to fallen man the power to turn himself unto God. The latter
defined liberty to be the ability at any moment to determine him-
self either for good or evil. The controversy between Luther and
Erasmus was really about ability, nominally it was about free-will.
Luther's book is entitled " De Servo Arbitrio," that of Erasmus,
" De Libero Arbitrio." Tins usage pervades all the symbols of the
Reformation, and was followed by the theologians of the sixteenth
century. They all ascribe free agency to man in the true sense
of the words, but deny to him freedom of will. To a great extent
this confusion is still kept up. Many of the prevalent definitions
of liberty are definitions of ability ; and much that is commonly
292 PART n. Ch. IX. — free agency.
advanced to prove the liberty of the will, is really intended, and is
of force only as in support of the doctrine of ability'. Jacobi de-
fines liberty to be the power to decide in favour of the dictates of
reason in opposition to the solicitations of sense. Bretschneider
says it is the power to decide according to reason. Augustine, and
after him most Augustinians distinguished, (1.) The liberty of
man before the fall, whicli was an ability either to sin or not to sin.
(2.) The state of man since the fall, when he has liberty to sin,
but not to good. (3.) The state of man in heaven when he has
liberty to good, but not to evil. This last is the highest form of
liberty, a,felix necessitas honi. This is the liberty which belongs
to God. In the popular mind perhaps the common idea of liberty
is, the power to decide for good or evil, sin or holiness. This idea
pervades more or less all the disquisitions in favour of the liberty
of indifference, or of power to the contrary. The essence of liberty
in a moral accountable being, according to Reid, is the power to do
what he is accountable for. So Cousin, Jouffroy, Tappan, and this
whole class of writers, make liberty and ability synonymous. The
last-mentioned author, when speaking of the distinction between
natural and moral inability, says, " when we have denied liberty in
denying a self-determining power, these definitions, in order to
make out a quasi liberty and ability, are nothing but ingenious folly
and plausible deception." ^ Here liberty and ability are avowedly
used as convertible terms.
Other writers who do not ignore the distinction between liberty
and ability, yet distinguish them only as different forms of liberty.
This is the case with many of the German authors. As for ex-
ample with Miiller, who distinguishes the Formale Freiheit, or
ability, from the Reale Freiheit, or liberty as it actually exists.
The former is only necessary as the condition of the latter. That
is, he admits, that if a man's acts are certainly determined by his
character, he is really free. But in order to render him justly
responsible for his character, it jnust be self-acquired.^ This is
confounding things which are not only distinct, but which are
admitted to be distinct. It is admitted by this class of writers, and,
indeed, by the whole Christian world, that men since the fall have
not power to make themselves holy ; much less to effect this trans-
formation by a volition. It is admitted that saints in glory are
1 Review of Edwards, edit. New York, 1839, pp. 164, 165.
2 " Frei ist ein AVesen inwiefern die innere Mitte seines Lebens aus der heraus es wirkt
und thiitig ist, durch Selbstbestimmung bedingt ist." Lehre von der Siinde, vol. ii. p. 72. He
elsewliere defines liberty to be the power of self-development. " Freiheit ist Macht aus sich
zu werden," p. 62.
§2.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 293
infallibly determined by their character to holiness, yet fallen men
and saints are admitted to be free. Ability may be lost, yet lib-
erty remain. The former is lost since the fall. Restored b}^ grace,
as they say, it is to be again lost in that liberty to good which is
identical with necessity. If liberty and ability ai'e thns distinct,
why should they be confounded ? We are conscious of liberty.
We know ourselves to be free in all our volitions. They reveal
tliemselves to our inmost consciousness as acts of self-determina-
tion. We cannot disown them, or escape responsibihty on account
of them, even if we try ; and yet no man is conscious of ability to
change his own heart. Free agency belongs to God, to angels, to
saints in glory, to fallen men, and to Satan ; and it is the same in
all. Yet in the strictest sense of the words, God cannot do evil ;
neither can Satan recover, by a volition, his lost inheritance of
holiness. It is a great evil thus to confound things essentially
distinct. It produces endless confusion. Augustine says, man is
not free since the fall, because he cannot but sin ; saints are free
because they cannot sin. Inability in the one case destroys free-
dom ; inability in the other is the perfection of freedom! Necessity
is the very opposite of liberty, and yet they are said to be identical.
One man in asserting the freedom of the will, means to assert free
agency, while he denies ability ; another means by it full ability.
It is certainly important that the same words should not be used to
express antagonistic ideas.
Confusion of thought and language, however, is not the principal
evil which arises from making liberty and ability identical. It
necessarily brings us into conflict with the truth, and with the
moral judgments of men. There are three truths of which
every man is convinced from the very constitution of his nature.
(1.) That he is a free agent. (2.) That none but free agents
can be accountable for their character or conduct. (3.) That he
does not possess ability to change his moral state by an act of the
will. Now, if in order to express the fact of his inability, we say,
that he is not a free agent, we contradict his consciousness ; or, if
he believe what we say, we destroy his sense of responsibility. Or
if we tell him that because he is a free agent, he has power to change
his heart at will, we again bring ourselves into conflict with his
convictions. He knows he is a free agent, and yet he knows that
he has not the power to make himself hoi}'. Free agency is the
power to decide according to our character; ability is the power to
change our character by a volition. The former, the Bible and con-
sciousness affirm belongs to man in every condition of his being ;
294 PART II. Ch. IX. — free agency.
the latter, the Bible and consciousness teach with equal expHcitness
does not belong to fallen man. The two things, therefore, ought
not to be confounded.
Self-determination and Self- determination of the Will.
Sixthly, Another source of confusion is not discriminating be-
tween self-determination and self-determination of the will. Those
who use the latter expression, say they intend to deny that the
Avill is determined by the antecedent state of the mind, and to
affirm that it has a self-determining power, independent of any-
thing preexisting or coexisting. They say that those who teach
that when the state of the mind is the same, the volition will
inevitably be the same, teach necessity and fatalism, and reduce
the will to a machine. " I know," says Reid, " nothing more that
can be desired to establish fatalism throughout the universe.
When it is proved that, through all nature, the same consequences
invariably result from the same circumstances, the doctrine of lib-
erty must be given up."^ The opposite doctrine is, that the will
is "self-moved ; it makes its nisus of itself, and of itself it forbears
to make it, and within the sphere of its activity, and in relation to
its objects, it has the power of selecting, by a mere arbitrary act,
any particular object. It is a cause all whose acts, as well as any
particular act, considered as phenomena demanding a cause, are
accounted for in itself alone. "^ Thus, if it be asked why the will
decides one way rather than another, the reason is to be sought in
its self-determining power. It can by an arbitrary act, choose or
not choose, choose one way or another, without a motive or with a
motive, for or against any or all influences brought to bear upon it.
But when these writers come to prove their case, it turns out that
this is not at all what they mean. It is not the self-determining
power of the will, but the self-determining power of the agent
that they are contending for. Reid says that all that is involved
in free agency is that man is an agent, the author of his own acts,
or that we are " efficient causes in our deliberate and voluntary
actions."^ "To say that man is a fi'ee agent, is no more than to
say that, in some instances, he is truly an agent and a cause, and
1 It may be well to remark, in passing, how uniformly writers of the school to which
Reid belongs, identify certainty and necessity, so long as they argue against an opponent.
In the pas-age above quoted, it is not that the will is determined by necessity, or by a
cause out of the mind, but simply that the same decisions " invariably " occur in the same
circumstances, that is declared to be fatalism.
- Tappan's Review of Edwards^ edit. New York, 1839, p. 223.
3 Active Powers, Essay iv. ch. 2; Works, Edinburgh, 18-19, p. 603.
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 295
is not merely acted upon as a passive instrument."^ Dr. Samuel
Clarke, in his controversy with Leibnitz, says, " the power of self-
motion or action, which, in all animate agents, is spontaneity, is,
in moral or rational agents, what we properly call liberty." Again,
he says, " the true definition of liberty is the power to act." Now,
as all the advocates of the doctrine of moral certainty admit self-
determination of the agent, and deny the self-determining power
of the will, the greatest confusion must follow from confounding
these two things ; and, besides this, undue advantage is thereby
secured for the doctrine of the self-determining power of the will,
by arguments which prove only self-determination, which every
man admits. On the other hand unfair prejudice is created against
the truth by representing it as denying the power of self-determi-
nation, when it only denies the self-determining power of the will.
Thus President Edwards is constantly represented as denying that
volitions are self-determinations, or that the mind is the efficient
cause of its own acts, or that man is an agent, because he wrote
against the self-determining power of the will as taught by Clarke
and Whitby. These two things ought not to be confounded, be-
cause they are really distinct. When we say that an agent is self-
determined, we say two things. (1.) That he is the author or
efficient cause of his own act. (2.) That the grounds or reasons
of his determination are within himself. He is determined by
what constitutes him at the moment a particular individual, his
feelings, principles, character, dispositions ; and not by any ah extra
or coercive influence. But when we say that the will is self-deter-
mined, we separate it from the other constituents of the man, as an
independent power, and on the one hand, deny that it is determined
by anything in the man ; and on the other, affirm that it deter-
mines itself by an inherent self-moving, arbitrary power. In this
ease the volition ceases to be a decision of the agent, for it may be
contrary to that agent's whole character, principles, inclinations,
feelings, convictions, or whatever else makes him what he is.
§ 3. Certainty Consistent with Liberty.
Although the doctrine of necessity subverts the foundation of all
morality and religion, our present concern is with the doctrine of
contingency. We wish simply to state the case as between cer-
tainty and uncertainty. The doctrine of necessity, in the proper
sense of the word, is antichristian ; but the Christian world is, and
ever has been divided between the advocates and opponents of the
^ Active Powers, Essay iv. ch. 3 ; Works, p. 607.
296 PART n. Ch. IX. — free agency.
doctrine of contingency. All Augustinians maintain that a free
act may be inevitably certain as to its occurrence. All Anti-
Augustinians, whether Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, or Arminians,
and most moral philosophers and metaphysicians, take the opposite
ground. They teach that as the will has a self- determining power
it may decide against all motives internal or external, against all
influences divine or human, so that its decisions cannot be rendered
inevitable without destroying their liberty. The very essence of
liberty, they say, is power to the contrary. In other words, a free
act is one performed with the consciousness that under precisely
the same circumstances, that is, in the same internal as well as ex-
ternal state of the mind, it might have been the opposite. Accord-
ing to the one doctrine, the will is determined ; according to the
other, it determines itself. In the one case, our acts are or may
be inevitably certain and yet be free. In the other, in order to be
free, they must be uncertain. We have already proved that this
is a fair statement of the case ; that the advocates of moral neces-
sity mean thereb}' certainty ; and that the advocates of contingency
mean thereby uncertainty. We have admitted that the use of the
word necessity, even when qualified by saying negatively, that it
is not " absolute, physical, or mechanical," and that it is merely
philosophical or moral, is unfortunate and inappropriate. And if
any opponent of Augustine or Edwards say that all he denies is an
absolute or physical necessity, and that he has no objection to the
doctrine of certaint}^, then the difference between him and Edwards
is merely verbal. But the real controversy lies deeper. It is not
the word, but the thing that is opposed. There is a real difference
as to the nature of fi'ee agency ; and that difference concerns this
very point : may the acts of free agents be rendered inevitably
certain without destroying their liberty ?
Points of Agreement/
It may be well before proceeding further, to state the points as
to which the parties to this controversy are agreed.
1. They are agreed that man is a free agent, in such a sense as
to be responsible for his character and acts. The dispute is not
about the fact, but the nature of free agency. If any one denies
that men are responsible moral agents, then he belongs to the
school of necessity, and is not a party to the discussion now under
consideration.
2. It is agreed as to the nature of free agency that it supposes
both reason and active power. Mere spontaneity does not consti-
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 297
tute free agency, because that is found in brutes, in idiots, and in
maniacs. There is no dispute as to what is meant by reason as one
of the elements of free agency ; and so far as active power, which
is its second element, is concerned, it is agreed that it means or in-
cludes efficiency. In other words, it is agreed that a free agent is
the efficient cause of his own acts.
3. It is admitted, on both sides, that in all important cases, men
act under the influence of motives. Reid, indeed, endeavours to
show that in many cases the will decides without any motive.
When there is no ground of preference, he says this must be the
case ; as when a man decides which of fifty shillings he shall give
away. He admits, however, that these arbitrary decisions relate
only to trifles. Others of the same school acknowledge that no
rational volition is ever arrived at except under the influence of
motives.
4. It is further agreed that the will is not determined with cer-
tainty by external motives. All Augustinians deny that the inter-
nal state of the mind which determines the will, is itself necessarily
or certainly determined by anything external to the mind itself.
5. It may be assumed, also, that the parties are agreed that the
word will is to be taken in its proper, restricted sense. The ques-
tion is not, whether men have power over their affections, their
likes and dislikes. No one carries the power of the will so far
as to maintain that we can, by a volition, change our feelings.
The question concerns our volitions alone. It is the ground or
reason of acts of self-determination that is in dispute. And, thei'e-
fore, it is the will considered as the faculty of self-determination,
and not as the seat of the affections, that comes into view. The
question, why one man is led to love God, or Christ, or his fellow
men, or truth and goodness ; and another to love the world, or sin,
is very different from the question, what determines him to do this
or that particular act. The will is that faculty by which we deter-
mine to do something which we conceive to be in our power. The
question, whether a man has power to change his own character at
any moment, to give himself, in the language of Scripture, a new
heart, concerns the extent of his power. That is, it is a question
concerning the ability or inability of the sinnor ; and it is a most
important question : but it should not be confounded with the ques-
tion of free agency, which is the one now under consideration.
The wiiole question therefore is, whether, when a man decides
to do a certain thing, his will is determined by the previous state of
his mind. Or, vvhether, with precisely the same views and feel-
298 PART 11. Ch. IX. — free agency.
ings, his decision may be one way at one time, and another at an-
other. That is, whether the will, or rather the agent, in order to
be free, must be undetermined.
Argument that Certainty suits all Free Agents.
It is certainly a strong argument in favour of that view of free
agency, which makes it consistent with certainty, or which supposes
that an agent may be determined with inevitable certainty as to his
acts, and yet those acts remain free, that it suits all classes or con-
ditions of free agents. To deny free agency to God, would be to
deny Him personality, and to reduce Him to a mere power or prin-
ciple. And yet, in all the universe, is there anything so certain as
that God will do right ? But if it be said that the conditions of ex-
istence in an infinite being are so different from what they are in
creatures, that it is not fair to argue from the one to the other, we
may refer to the case of our blessed Lord. He had a true body
and a reasonable soul. He had a human will; a mind regulated by
the same laws as those which determine the intellectual and volun-
taiy acts of ordinary men. In his case, however, although there
may have been the metaphysical possibility of evil (though even
that is a painful hypothesis), still it was more certain that He would
be without sin than that the sun or moon should endure. No con-
ceivable physical law could be more certain in the production of its
effects than his will in always deciding for the right. But if it be
objected even to this case, that the union of the divine and human
natures in the person of our Lord places Him in a different category
from ourselves, and renders it unfair to assume that what was true
in his case must be true in ours ; without admitting the force of the
objection, we may refer to the condition of the saints in heaven.
They, beyond doubt, continue to be free agents ; and yet their acts
are, and to everlasting will be, determined with absolute and
inevitable certainty to good. Certainty, therefore, must be consist-
ent with free agency. What can any Christian say to this ? Does
he deny that the saints in glory are free, or does he deny the
absolute certainty of their perseverance in holiness? Would his
conception of the blessedness of heaven be thereby exalted ? Or
would it raise his ideas of the dignity of the redeemed to believe it
to be uncertain whether they will be sinful or holy? We may,
however, come down to our present state of existence. Without
assuming anything as to the corruption of our nature, or taking for
granted anything which Pelagius would deny, it is a certain fact
that all men sin. There has never existed a mere man on the face
§ 3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 299
of the earth who did not sin. When we look on a new-born infant
we know that whatever may be nncertain in its future, it is abso-
lutely, inevitably certain that, should it live, it will sin. In every
aspect, therefore, in which we can contemplate free agency, whether
in God, in tiie human nature of Christ, in the redeemed in heaven,
or in man here on earth, we find that it is compatible with absolute
certainty.
Arguments from Scripture.
A second argument on this subject is derived from those doctrines
of Scripture which necessarily suppose that free acts may be certain
as to their occurrence.
1. Tiie first and most obvious of these doctrines is the fore-
knowledge of God. Whatever metaphysical explanation may
be given of this divine attribute ; however we may ignore the
distinction between knowledge and foreknowledge, or however
we may contend that because God inhabits eternity, and is in no
wise subject to the limitations of time, and that to Him nothing
is successive, still the fact remains that we exist in time, and tliat
to us there is a future as well as a present. It remains, there-
fore, a fact that human acts are known before they occur in time,
and consequently are foreknown. But if foreknown as future,
they must be certain ; not because foreknowledge renders their
occurrence certain, but because it supposes it to be so. It is a
contradiction in terms to say that an uncertain event can be fore-
known as certain. To deny foreknowledge to God, to say that free
acts, because necessarily uncertain as to their occurrence, are not
the objects of foreknowledge any more than sounds are the objects
of sight, or mathematical truths of the affections, is to destroy the
very idea of God. The future must be as dark to Him as to us ;
and He must every moment be receiving vast accessions of
knowledge. He cannot be an eternal being, pervading all dura-
tion with a simultaneous existence, much less an omniscient Being,
to whom tliere is nothing new. It is impossible, therefore, to believe
in God as He is revealed in the Bible, unless we believe that all
things are known unto Him from the beginning. But if all things
are known, all things, whether fortuitous or free, are certain ; con-
sequently certainty must be consistent with freedom. We are not
more assured of our existence than we are of our free agency. To
say that this is a delusion is to deny the veracity of consciousness,
which of necessity not only involves a denial of the veracity of
God, but also subverts the foundation of all knowledge, and plunges
us into absolute scepticism. We may just as well say that our ex-
300 PART 11. Ch. IX. — free agency.
istence is a delusion as that any other fact of consciousness is delu-
sive. We have no more and no higher evidence for one such fact
than for another. Men may speculate as they please, they must
believe and act according to the laws impressed on our nature by
our Creator. We must believe, therefore, in our existence and in
our free agency ; and as by a necessity scarcely less imperative we
must believe that all things are known to God from eternity, and
that if foreknown tlieir occurrence is certain, we cannot denv that
certainty is consistent with free agency without involving ourselves
in palpable contradictions. This argument is so conclusive that
most theistical advocates of the doctrine of contingency, when they
come to deal with it, give the matter up, and acknowledge that an
act may be certain as to its occurrence and yet free. They content
themselves for the time being with denying that it is necessary,
although it may be certain. But they forget that by " moral
necessity" nothing more than certainty is intended, and that
certainty is precisely the thing which, on other occasions, they
affirm to be contrary to liberty. If from all eternity it is fixed how
every man will act ; if the same consequences follow invariably
from the same antecedents ; if the acts of men are inevitable, this
is declared to be fatalism. If, however, it be indeed true that the
advocates of indifference, self-determining power of the will, power
of contrary choice, or by whatever other name the theory of con-
tingency may be called, really do not intend to oppose the doctrine
of certainty, but are simply combating fatalism or physical necessity,
then the controversy is ended. What more could Leibnitz or
Edwards ask than Reid concedes in the following passage : " It
must be granted, that, as whatever was, certainly was, and what-
ever is, certainly is, so whatever shall be, certainly shall be. These
are identical propositions, and cannot be doul)ted by those who con-
ceive them distinctly. But I know no rule of reasoning by which it
can be inferred that because an event certainly shall he, therefore
its production Tnust he necessary. The manner of its production,
whether free or necessary, cannot be concluded from the time of
its production, whether it be past, present, or future. Tiiat it shall
be, no more implies that it shall be necessarily than that it shall be
freely produced ; for neither present, past, iior future, have any
more connection with necessity than they have with freedom. ' I
grant, therefore, that from events being foreseen, it may be justly
concluded, that, they are certainly future ; but from their being
certainly future it does not follow that they are necessary'." ^ As
1 Active Powers, Essay iv. cli. 10; Works, edit. Edinburgh, 1849, p. 629.
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 301
all things are foreseen all things are inevitably certain as to their
occurrence. This is granting all any Augustinian need demand.
2. Another doctrine held by a large part of the Chi'istian world
in all ages which of necessity precludes the doctrine of contingency,
is that of the foreordination of future events. Those who believe
that God foreordains whatever comes to pass must believe that the
occurrence of all events is determined with unalterable certainty.
It is not our object to prove any of these doctrines, but simply to
argue from them as true. It may, however, be remarked that there
is no difficulty attending the docti'ine of foreordination which does
not attach to that of foreknowledge. The latter supposes the
certainty of free acts, and the former secures their certainty. If
their being certain be consistent with liberty, their being rendered
certain cannot be incompatible with it. All that foreordination
does is to render it certain that free acts shall occur. The whole
difficulty is in their being certain, and that must be admitted by
every consistent theist. The point now in hand is, that those who
believe that the Bible teaches the doctrine of foreordination are
shut up to the conclusion that an event may be free and yet certain,
and therefore that the theory of contingency which supposes that
an act to be free must be uncertain, is unscriptural and false.
3. The doctrine of divine providence involves the same conclusion.
That doctrine teaches that God governs all his creatures and all their
actions. That is, that He so conducts the administration of his
government as to accomplish all his purposes. Here again the diffi-
culty is the same, and is no greater than before. Foreknowledge
supposes certainty; foreordination determines it; and providence
effects it. The last does no more than the first of necessity pre-
supposes. If certainty be compatible Avith freedom, providence
which only secures certainty cannot be inconsistent with it. Who
for any metaphysical difficulty — who, because he is not able to
comprehend how God can effectually govern free agents without
destroying their nature, would give up the doctrine of providence ?
Who would wish to see the reins of universal empire fall from the
hands of infinite wisdom and love, to be seized by chance or fate ?
Who would not rather be governed by a Father than by a tornado ?
If God cannot effectually control the acts of free agents there can
be no prophecy, no prayer, no thanksgiving, no promises, no
security of salvation, no certainty whether in the end God or Satan
is to be triumphant, whether heaven or hell is to be the consum-
mation. Give us certainty — the secure conviction that a sparrow
cannot fall, or a sinner move a finger, but as God permits and
302 PART II. Ch. IX.— free agency.
ordains. We must have either God or Satan to rule. And if God
has a providence He must be able to render the free acts of his
creatures certain ; and therefore certainty must be consistent with
liberty. Was it not certain that Christ should, according to the
Scriptures, be by wicked hands crucified and slain, and yet were
not his murderers free in all they did? Let it be remembered
that in all these doctrines of providence, foreordination, and fore-
knowledge nothing is assumed beyond what Reid, one of the most
able opponents of Leibnitz and Edwards, readily admits. He grants
the prescience of future events ; he grants that prescience supposes
cei'tainty, and that is all that either foreordination or providence
secures. If an act may be free, although certainly foreknown, it
may be free although foreordained and secured by the great scheme
of providence.
4. The whole Christian world believes that God can convert
men. They believe that He can effectually lead them to repent-
ance and faith ; and that He can secure them in heaven from ever
falling into sin. That is, they believe that He can render their
free acts absolutely certain. When we say that this is the faith of
the whole Christian world we do not mean that no individual
Christian or Christian theologian has ever denied this doctrine of
grace ; but we do mean that the doctrine, to the extent above
stated, is included in the Confessions of all the great historical
churches of Christendom in all ages. It is just as much a part of
the established faith of Christians as the divinity of our Redeemer.
This being the fact, the doctrine that contingency is necessary to
liberty cannot be reconciled with Christian doctrine. It has,
indeed, been extensively held by Christians; but our object is to
show that it is in conflict with doctrines which they themselves as
Christians must admit. If God can fulfil his promise to give men
a new heart; if He can translate them from the kingdom of dark-
ness into the kingdom of his dear Son ; if He can give them
repentance unto life ; if there be no impropriety in praying that
He would preserve them from falling, and give them the secure
possession of eternal life, then He can control their free acts. He
can, by his grace, without violating their freedom, make it abso-
lutely certain that they will repent and believe, and persevere in
holiness. If these things are so, then it is evident that any theory
which makes contingency or uncertainty essential to libei-ty must
be irreconcilable with some of the plainest and most precious doc-
trines of the Scriptures.
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 303
The Argument from Consciousness.
A third argument on this subject is derived from consciousness.
It is conceded that every man is conscious of hberty in his volun-
tary acts. It is conceded further that this consciousness proves the
fact of free agency. The vahdity of this argument urged by the
advocates of contingency against the doctrine of necessity in any
such form as involves a denial of this fact of consciousness, we fully
admit. The doctrine opposed by Reid and Stewart, as well as by
many continental writeis, was really a doctrine which denied both
the liberty and responsibility of man. This is not the Augustinian
or Edwardean doctrine, although unhappily both are expressed by
the same terms. The one is the doctrine of physical or mechanical
necessity ; the other that of certainty. As between the advocates
of the latter theory and the defenders of contingency, it is agreed
that man is a free agent ; it is further agreed that it is included in
the consciousness of free agency, that we are efficient and respon-
sible authors of our own acts, that we had the power to perform or
not to perform any voluntary act of which we were the authors.
But we maintain that we are none the less conscious that this in-
timate conviction that we had power not to perform an act, is
conditional. That is, we are conscious that the act might have
been otherwise had other views or feelings been present to our
minds, or been allowed their clue weight. No man is conscious of
a power to will against his will ; that is, the will, in the narrow
sense of the word, cannot be against the will in the wide sense of
the term. This is only saying, that a man cannot prefer against
his preference or choose against his choice. A volition is a prefer-
ence resulting in a decision. A man may have one preference at
one time and another at another. He may have various conflicting
feelings or principles in action at the same time ; but he cannot
have coexisting opposite preferences. What consciousness teaches
on this subject seems to be simply this : that in every voluntary act
we had some reason for acting as we did ; that in the absence of
that reason, or in the presence of others, which others we may feel
oucrht to have been present, we should or could have acted differ-
ently. Under the reasons for an act are included all that is meant
by the word motives^ in the subjective sense of the term ; i. e.,
principles, inclinations, feelings, etc. We cannot conceive that a
man can be conscious that, with his principles, feelings, and in-
clinations being one way, his will may be another way. A man
filled with the fear of God, or with the love of Christ, cannot will
304 PART n. Ch. ix.— free agency.
to blaspheme his God or Saviour. That fear or love constitutes
for the time being the man. He is a man existing in that state,
and if his acts do not express that state they are not his.
Argument from the Moral Character of Volitions.
This suggests a fourth argument on this subject. Unless the
will be determined by the previous state of the mind, in opposition
to being self-determined, there can be no morality in our acts. A
man is responsible for his external acts, because they are decided
by his will ; he is responsible for his volitions, because they are
determined by his principles and feelings ; he is responsible for his
principles and feelings, because of their inherent nature as good or
bad, and because they are his own, and constitute his character.
If you detach the outward act from the will it ceases to have any
moral character. If I kill a man, unless the act was intentional,
i. e., the result of a volition to kill or injure, there is no morality
in the act. If I willed to kill, then the character of the act depends
on the motives which determined the volition. If those motives
were a regard to the authority of God, or of the demands of justice
legally expressed, the volition was right. If the motive was malice
or cupidity, the volition and consequent act were wrong. It is
obvious that if the will be self-determined, independent of the
previous state of the mind, it has no more character than the out-
ward act detached from the volition, — it does not reveal or express
anything in the mind. If a man when filled with pious feeling can
will the most impious acts ; or, when filled with enmity to God,
have the volitions of a saint, then his volitions and acts have nothing
to do with the man himself. They do not express his character,
and he cannot be responsible for them.
Argument from the Rational Nature of Man.
The doctrine that the will is determined and not self-determined,
is moreover involved in the rational character of our acts. A
rational act is not merely an act performed by a rational being, but
one performed for a reason, whether good or bad. An act performed
without a reason, without intention or object, for which no reason
can be assigned beyond the mere power of acting, is as irrational
as the actions of a brute or of an idiot. If the will therefore ever
acts independently of the understanding and of the feelings, its
volitions are not the acts of a rational being any further than they
would be if reason were entirely dethroned. The only true idea
of liberty is that of a being acting in accordance with the laws of
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 305
its nature. So long as an animal is allowed to act under the control
of its own nature, determined in all it does by what is within itself,
it has all the liberty of which it is capable. And so long as a man
is determined in his volitions and acts by his own reason and feelings
he has all the liberty of which he is capable. But if you detach
the acts of an animal from its inward state its liberty is gone. It
becomes possessed. And if the acts of a man are not determined
by his reason and feelings he is a puppet or a maniac.
The doctrine that the will acts independently of the previous state
of the mind supposes that our volitions are isolated atoms, springing
up from the abyss of the capricious self-determination of the will,
from a source beyond the control or ken of reason. They are
purely casual, arbitrary, or capricious. They have no connection
with the past, and give no promise of the future. On this hypothesis
there can be no such thing as character. It is, however, a fact of
experience universally admitted, that there are such things as prin-
ciples or dispositions which control the will. We feel assured that
an honest man will act honestly, and that a benevolent man will
act benevolently. We are moreover assured that these principles
may be so strong and fixed as to render the volitions absolutely
certain. "Rational beings," says Reid, "in proportion as they are
wise and good, will act according to the best motives ; and every
rational being who does otherwise, abuses his liberty. The most
perfect being, in everything where there is a right and a wrong, a
better and a worse, always infallibly acts according to the best
motives. This, indeed, is little else than an identical proposition ;
for it is a contradiction to say, that a perfect being does what is
wrong or unreasonable. But to say that he does not act freely,
because he always does what is best, is to say, that the proper use
of liberty destroys liberty, and that liberty consists only in its
abuse." ^ That is, the character determines the act; and to say
that the infallible certainty of acts destroys their freedom is to
make " liberty destroy liberty." Though Reid and Stewart wrote
against Leibnitz and Edwards as well as against Hobbes and
Belsham, the sentences above quoted contain the whole doctrine
of the two former distinguished men, and of their innumerable
predecessors, associates, and followers. It is the doctrine that
infallible certainty is consistent with liberty. This conviction is sb
wrought into the minds of men that they uniformly, unconsciously
as well as consciously, act upon it. They assume that a man's
volitions are determined by motives. They take for granted that
1 Active Powers, Essay iv. ch. 4 ; Works, p. 609.
VOL. II. 20
306 PART n. Ch. IX.— free agency.
there is such a thing as character ; and therefore they endeavour
to mould the character of those under their influence, assured that
if they make the tree good the fruit will be good. They do not
act on the principle that the acts of men are capricious, that the
will is self-determined, acting without or against motives as well as
with them : so that it must always and forever remain uncertain
how it will decide.
Argument from the Doctrine of a Sufficient Cause.
The axiom that every effect must have a cause, or the doctrine
of a sufficient reason, applies to the internal as well as to the exter-
nal world. It governs the whole sphere of our experience, inward
and outward. Every volition is an effect, and therefore must have
had a cause. There must have been some sufficient reason why
it was so, rather than otherwise. That reason was not the mere
power of the agent to act ; for that only accounts for his acting,
not for his acting one way rather than another. The force of
gravity accounts for a stone falling to the earth, but not for its
falling here instead of there. The power to walk accounts for a
man's walking, but not for his walking east rather than west. Yet
we are told even by the most distinguished writers, that the efficiency
of the agent is all that is required to satisfy the instinctive demand
which we make for a sufficient reason, in the case of our volitions.
Reid, as quoted above, asks, " Was there a cause of the action ?
Undoubtedly there was. Of every event there must be a cause
that had power sufficient to produce it, and that exerted that power
for the purpose. In the present case, either the man was the cause
of the action, and then it was a free action, and is justly imputed
to him ; or it must have had another cause, and cannot justly be
imputed to the man. In this sense, therefore, it is granted that
there was a sufficient reason for the action ; but the question about
liberty, is not in the least affected by this concession."^ Again, he
asks, " Why may not an efficient cause be defined to be a being
that had power and will to produce the effect ? The production
of an effect requires active power, and active power, being a quality,
must be in a being endowed with that power. Power without will
produces no effect ; but, where these are conjoined, the effect must
be produced." 2 Sir William Hamilton's annotation on the former
of these passages is, " that of a hyper-physical as well as of a
physical event, we must, by a necessary mental law, always suppose
1 Actine Powers, Essay iv. ch. 9; Woi-ks, edit. Edinburgh, 1849, p. 625.
2 Ibid. p. 627.
§3.] CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 307
a sufficient reason why it is, and is as it is." The efficiency of the
agent, therefore, is not a sufficient reason for the volition being as
it is. It is inconceivable that an undetermined cause should act
one way rather than another ; and if it does act thus without a
sufficient reason, its action can be neither rational nor moral.
Another common method of answering this argument is to
assume that because the advocates of certainty say that the will is
determined by motives, and therefore, that the motives are the
cause why the volition is as it is, they mean that the efficiency to
which the volition is due is in the motives, and not in the agent.
Thus Stewart says, " The question is not concerning the influence
of motives, but concerning the nature of that influence. The ad-
vocates for necessity [certainty] represent it as the influence of a
cause in producing its effect. The advocates for liberty acknowledge
that the motive is the occasion for acting, or the reason for acting ;
but contend that it is so far from being the efficient cause of it, that
it supposes the efficiency to reside elsewhere, namely, in the mind
of the agent." ^ This representation has been sufficiently answered
above. Motives are not the efficient cause of the volition ; that
efficiency resides in the agent; but what we, "by a necessary
mental law," must demand, is a sufficient reason why the agent
exerts his efficiency in one way rather than another. To refer us
simply to his efficiency, is to leave the demand for a sufficient rea-
son entirely unsatisfied ; in other words, it is to assume that there
may be an effect without a cause ; which is impossible.
The doctrine of free agency, therefore, which underlies the
Bible, which is involved in the consciousness of every rational
being, and which is assumed and acted on by all men, is at an
equal remove, on the one hand, from the doctrine of physical or
mechanical necessity, which precludes the possibility of liberty
and responsibility ; and, on the other, from the doctrine of contin-
gency, which assumes that an act in order to be free must be un-
certain ; or that the will is self-determined, acting independently
of the reason, conscience, inclinations and feelings. It teaches that
a man is a free and responsible agent, because he is author of his
own acts, and because he is determined to act by nothing out of
himself, but by his own views, convictions, inclinations, feelings,
and dispositions, so that his acts are the true products of the man,
and really represent or reveal what he is. The profoundest of mod-
ern authors admit that this is the true theory of liberty; but some
1 Philosophy of the Moral Powers, ii Appendix (^ 4) ; Works, Hamilton's edition, Edin-
burgh, 1855, vol. vi. p. 370.
308 PART n. Ch. Vm. — FREE AGENCY.
of them, as for example Muller, in his elaborate work on " Sin,"
maintain that in order to render man justly responsible for the acts
which are thus determined by their internal state or character,
that state must itself be self-produced. This doctrine has already
been sufficiently discussed when treating of original sin. It may,
however, be here remarked, in conclusion of the present discussion,
that the principle assumed is contrary to the common judgment of
men. That judgment is that the dispositions and feelings which
constitute character derive their morality or immorality from their
nature, and not from their origin. Malignity is evil and love is
good, whether concreated, innate, acquired, or infused. It may be
difficult to reconcile the doctrine of innate evil dispositions with the
justice and goodness of God, but that is a difficulty which does
not pertain to this subject. A malignant being is an evil being, if
endowed with reason, whether he was so made or so born. And
a benevolent rational being is good in the universal judgment of
men, whether he was so created or so born. We admit that it is
repugnant to our moral judgments that God should create an evil
being ; or that any being should be born in a state of sin, unless
his being so born is the consequence of a just judgment. But this
has nothing to do with the question whether moral dispositions do
not owe their character to their nature. The common judgment
of men is that they do. If a man is really humble, benevolent,
and holy, he is so regarded, irrespective of all inquiry how he
became so.
A second remark on the principle above stated, is, that it is not
only opposed to the common judgment of men, but that it is also
contraiy to the faith of the whole Christian Church. We trust that
this language will not be attributed to a self-confident or dogmatic
spirit. We recognize no higher standard of truth apart from the
infallible word of God, than the teachings of the Holy Spirit as
revealed in the faith of the people of God. It is beyond dispute
the doctrine of the Church universal, that Adam was created holy ;
that his moral character was not self-acquired. It is no less the
doctrine of the universal Church, that men, since the fall, are born
unholy ; and it is also included in the faith of all Christian Churches,
that in regeneration men are made holy, not by their own act, but
by the act of God. In other words, the doctrines of original right-
eousness, of original sin, and of regeneration by the Spirit of God,
are, and ever have been the avowed doctrines of the Greek, Latin,
and Protestant Churches : and if these doctrines are, as these
Churches all believe, contained in the word of God, then it cannot
§3.] CERTAINTr CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY. 309
be true that moral character, in order to be the object of approba-
tion or disapprobation, must be self-acquired. A man, therefore,
may be justly accountable for acts which are determined by his
character, whether that character or inward state be inherited,
acquired, or induced by the grace of God.
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY.
PART III.
SOTERIOLOGY.
PART III.— SOTERIOLOGY.
Under tliis head are included God's purpose and plan in rela-
tion to the salvation of men ; tlie person and work of the Re-
deemer ; and the application of that work by the Holy Spirit to
the actual salvation of the people of God.
CHAPTER I.
THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
§ 1. Q-od has sueh a Plan,
The Scriptures speak of an Economy of Redemption ; the plan
or purpose of God in relation to the salvation of men. They call
it in reference to its full revelation at the time of the advent, the
olKovofua Tov TrXr/pco/xaros twv Kaipwv, " The economy of the fulness
of times." It is declared to be the plan of God in relation to his
gathering into one harmonious body, all the objects of redemption,
whether in heaven or earth, in Christ. Eph. i. 10. It is also
called the oiKovofiia tov fiva-rqpiov, the mysterious purpose or plan
which had been hidden for ages in God, which it was the great
design of the gospel to reveal, and which was intended to make
known to principalities and powers, by the Church, the manifold
wisdom of God. Eph. iii. 9.
A plan supposes : (1.) The selection of some definite end or
object to be accomplished. (2.) The choice of appropriate means.
(3.) At least in the case of God, the effectual application and con-
trol of those means to the accomplishment of the contemplated
end.
As God works on a definite plan in the external world, it is fair
to infer that the same is true in reference to the moral and spiritual
world. To the eye of an uneducated man the heavens are a chaos
of stars. The astronomer sees order and system in this confusion ;
all those bright and distant luminaries have their appointed places
and fixed orbits ; all are so arranged that no one interferes with
any other, but each is directed according to one comprehensive
and magnificent conception. The innumerable forms of vegetable
314 PART m. Ch. I. — THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
life, are not a confused mass, but to the eye of science arrange
tliemselves into regular classes, orders, genera, and species, exhib-
iting a unity of design pervading the whole. The zoologist sees
in the hundreds of thousands of animals which inhabit our globe,
four, and only four original typical forms, of which all the others
are the development in an ascending order, no one ever passing
into the other, but all presenting one great comprehensive system
carried out in all its details. At the head of these innumerable
lower forms of animal life, stands man, endowed with powers which
elevate him above the class of mere animals and bring him into
fellowship with angels and with God himself. As in all these lower
departments of his works, God acts according to a preconceived
plan, it is not to be supposed that in the higher sphere of his opera-
tions, which concerns the destiny of men, everything is left to
chance and allowed to take its undirected course to an undeter-
mined end. We accordingly find that the Scriptures distinctly
assert in reference to the dispensations of grace not only that God
sees the end from the beginning, but that He works all things ac-
cording to the counsel of his own will, or, according to his eternal
purpose.
The Importance of a Knowledge of this Plan.
If there be such a plan concerning the redemption of man, it is
obviously of the greatest importance that it should be known and
correctly apprehended. If in looking at a complicated machine
we are ignorant of the object it is designed to accomplish, or of the
relation of its several parts, we must be unable to understand or
usefully to apply it. In like manner if we are ignorant of the
great end aimed at in the scheme of redemption, or of the relation
of the several parts of that scheme ; or if we misconceive that end
and that relation, all our views must be confused or erroneous. We
shall be unable either to exhibit it to others or to apply it to our-
selves. If the end of redemption as well as of creation and of
providence, is the production of the greatest amount of happiness,
then Christianity is one thing ; if the end be the glory of God, then
Christianity is another thing. The whole character of our theology
and religion depends on the answer to that question. In like man-
ner, if the special and proximate design of redemption is to render
certain the salvation of the people of God, then the whole Augus-
tinian system follows by a logical necessity ; if its design is simply
to render the salvation of all men possible, the opposite system
must be received as true. The order of the divine decrees, or in
other words, the relation in which the several parts of the divine
§1.] GOD HAS SUCH A PLAN. 315
plan stand to each other, is therefore very far from being a matter
of idle speculation. It must determine our theology, and our the-
ology determines our religion.
How the Plan of Crod can he known.
If there be such a preconceived divine scheme relating to the sal-
vation of men ; and if the proper comprehension of that scheme be
thus important, the next question is, How can it be ascertained ?
The first answer to this question is that in every system of facts
which are really related to each other, the relation is revealed in
the nature of the facts. The astronomer, the geologist, and the
zoologist very soon discover that the facts of their several sciences
stand in a certain relation to each other, and admit of no other.
If the relation be not admitted the facts themselves must be denied
or distorted. The only source of mistake is either an incomplete
induction of the facts, or failing to allow them their due relative
importance. One system of astronomy has given place to another,
only because the earlier astronomers were not acquainted with
facts which their successors discovered. The science has at last
attained a state which commands the assent of all competent minds,
and which cannot be hereafter seriously modified. The same, to
a greater or less extent, is true in all departments of natural sci-
ence. It must be no less true in theology. What the facts of
nature are to the naturalist, the facts of the Bible and of our moral
and religious consciousness, are to the theologian. If, for example,
the Bible and experience teach the fact of the entire inability of
fallen men to anything spiritually good, that fact stubbornly refuses
to harmonize with any system which denies efficacious grace or
sovereign election. It of itself determines the relation in which
the eternal purpose of God stands to the salvation of the individual
sinner. So of all other great Scriptural facts. They arrange them-
selves in a certain order by an inward law, just as certainly and as
clearly as the particles of matter in the process of crystallization, or
in the organic unity of the body of an animal. It is true here as in
natural science, that it is only by an imperfect induction of facts,
or by denying or perverting them, that their relative position in the
scheme of salvation can be a matter of doubt or of diversity of
opinion. But secondly, we have in theology a guide which the
man of science does not possess. We have in the Scriptures not
only the revelation of the grand design of God in all his works of
creation, providence, and redemption, which is declared to be his
own glory, but we have, in many cases, the relation which one
316 PART in. ch. l — the plan of salvation.
part of this scheme bears to other parts expressly stated. Thus,
for example, it is said, that Christ died in order that He might
save his people from their sins. We are elected to holiness.
Therefore election precedes sanctification. We are chosen to be
made holy, and not because we are holy; These revelations con-
cerning the relation of the subordinate parts of the scheme of
redemption, of necessity determine the nature of the whole plan.
This will become plain from what follows.
As men differ in their understanding of the facts of Scripture,
and as some are more careful than others to gather all the facts
which are to be considered, or more faithful in submitting to their
authority, so they differ in their views of the plan which God has
devised for the salvation of men. The more important of the views
which have been adopted on this subject are, —
§ 2. Supralapsarianism.
First, the supralapsarian scheme. According to this view, God
in order to manifest his grace and justice selected from creatable
men (i, e., from men to be created) a certain number to be vessels
of mercy, and certain others to be vessels of wrath. In the order
of thought, election and reprobation precede the purpose to create
and to permit the fall. Creation is in order to redemption. God
creates some to be saved, and others to be lost.
This scheme is called supralapsarian because it supposes that
men as unfallen, or before the fall, are the objects of election to
eternal life, and foreordination to eternal death. This view was
introduced among a certain class of Augustinians even before the
Reformation, but has not been generally received. Augustine
himself, and after him the great body of those who adopt his system
of doctrine, were, and are, infralapsarians. That is, they hold that
it is from the mass of fallen men that some were elected to eternal
life, and some for the just punishment of their sins, foreordained to
eternal death. The position of Calvin himself as to this point has
been disputed. As it was not in his day a special matter of
discussion, certain passages may be quoted from his writings which
favour the supralapsarian and other passages which favour the
infralapsarian view. In the " Consensus Genevensis," written by
him, there is an explicit assertion of the infralapsarian doctrine.
After saying that there was little benefit in speculating on the fore-
ordination of the fall of man, he adds, " Quod ex damnata AdaB
sobole Deus quos visum est eligit, quos vult reprobat, sicuti ad
fidem exercendam longe aptior est, ita majore fructu tractatur."^
1 Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, p. 269.
I
§ 2.] SUPRALAPSARIANISM. 317
In the "Formula Consensus Helvetica," drawn up as the testimony
of the Swiss churches in 1675, whose principal authors were Heid-
egger and Turrettin, there is a formal repudiation of the supralap-
sarian view. In the Synod of Dort, which embraced delegates
from all the Reformed churches on the Continent and in Gr«at
Britain, a large majority of the members were infralapsarians,
Gomarus and Voetius being the prominent advocates of the opposite
view. The canons of that synod, while avoiding any extreme
statements, were so framed as to give a symbolical authority to the
infralapsarian doctrine. They say : ^ " Cum omnes homines in
Adamo peccaverint et rei sint facti maledictionis et mortis isternae,
Deus nemini fecisset injurlam, si universum genus humanum in
peccato et maledictione relinquere, ac propter peccatum damnare
voluisset." The same remark applies to the Westminster Assem-
bly. Twiss, the Prolocutor of that venerable body, was a zealous
supralapsarian ; the great majority of its members, however, were
on the other side. The symbols of that Assembly, while they
clearly imply the infralapsarian view, were yet so framed as to
avoid offence to those who adopted the supralapsarian theory. In
the "Westminster Confession,"''^ it is said that God appointed the
elect unto eternal life, and "the rest of mankind, God was pleased,
according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby
He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of
his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain
them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his
glorious justice." It is here taught that those whom God passes
by are " the rest of mankind ; " not the rest of ideal or possible
men, but the rest of those human beings who constitute mankind,
or the human race. In the second place, the passage quoted
teaches that the non-elect are passed by and ordained to wrath
" for their sin." This implies that they were contemplated as sin-
ful before this foreordination to judgment. The infralapsarian
view is still more obviously assumed in the answers to the 19th and
20th questions in the " Shorter Catechism." It is there taught
that all mankind by the fall lost communion with God, and are
under his wrath and curse, and that God out of his mere good
pleasure elected some (some of those under his wrath and curse),
unto everlasting life. Such has been the doctrine of the great
body of Augustinians from the time of Augustine to the present
day.
1 Caput I. art. 1 ; Acta Synodi, edit. Dort, 1620, p. 241.
2 Chapter iii. §§ 6, 7.
318 PART m. Ch. 1. — THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
Objections to Supralapsarianism.
The most obvious objections to the supralapsarian theory are,
(1.) That it seems to involve a contradiction. Of a Non En»^ as
Turrettin says, nothing can be determined. The purpose to save
or condemn, of necessity must, in the order of thought, follow the
purpose to create. The latter is presupposed in the former.
(2.) It is a clearly revealed Scriptural principle that where there
is no sin there is no condemnation. Therefore there can be no
foreordination to death which does not contemplate its objects as
already sinful. (3.) It seems plain from the whole argument of
the Apostle in Rom. ix. 9-21, that the " mass " out of which
some are chosen and others left, is the mass of fallen men. The
design of the sacred writer is to vindicate the sovereignty of God
in the dispensation of his grace. He has mercy upon one and not on
another, according to his own good pleasure, because all are equally
unworthy and guilty. The vindication is drawn, not only from the
relation of God to his creatures as their Creator, but also from his
relation to them as a sovereign whose laws they have violated.
This representation pervades the whole Scriptures. Believers are
said to be chosen " out of the world ; " that is, out of the mass of
fallen men. And everywhere, as in Rom. i. 24, 26, 28, reprobation
is declared to be judicial, founded upon the sinfulness of its objects.
Otherwise it could not be a manifestation of the justice of God.
(4.) Creation is never in the Bible represented as a means of
executing the purpose of election and reprobation. This, as just
remarked, cannot be so. The objects of election are definite indi-
viduals, as in this controversy is admitted. But the only thing
which distinguishes between merely possible or " creatable " men
and definite individuals, certain to be created and saved or lost, is
the divine purpose that they shall be created. So that the purpose
to create of necessity, in the order of nature, precedes the purpose
to redeem. Accordingly, in Rom. vili. 29, 30, Tr/soyvwo-ts is declared
to precede irpoopicrfjios. " Whom he did foreknow he also did pre-
destinate." But foreknowledge implies the certain existence of its
objects ; and certainty of existence supposes on the part of God the
purpose to create. Nothing is or is to be but in virtue of the decree
of Him who foreordains whatever comes to pass. All futurition,
therefore, depends on foreordination ; and foreknowledge supposes
futurition. We have, therefore, the express authority of the Apostle
for saying that foreknowledge, founded on the purpose to create,
precedes predestination. And, therefore, creation is not a means
I
§ 3.] INFRALAPSARIANISM. 319
to execute the purpose of predestination, for the end must precede
the means ; and, according to Paul, the purpose to create precedes
the purpose to redeem, and therefore cannot be a means to that
end. Our Lord, we are told, was delivered to death " by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." But his death, of
necessity, supposed his incarnation, and therefore in the order of
thought, or in the plan of God, the purpose to prepare Him a body
preceded the purpose to deliver Him to the death of the cross. The
only passage of the Bible which appears to teach explicitly that cre-
ation is a means for the execution of the purpose of predestination
is Eph. iii. 9, 10. There, according to some it is said that God cre-
ated all things in order that (tva) his manifold wisdom might be
known through the Church. If this be the relation between the sev-
eral clauses of these verses the Apostle does teach that the universe
was created in order that through redeemed men (the Church) the
glory of God should be revealed to all rational creatures. In this
sense and in this case creation is declared to be a means to redemp-
tion ; and therefore the purpose to redeem must precede the purpose
to create. Such, however, is not the logical connection of the
clauses in this passage. Paul does not say that God created all
things in order that. He is not speaking of the design of crea-
tion, but of the design of the gospel and of his own call to the
apostleship. To me, he says, is this grace given that I should
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and
to enlighten all men in the knowledge of the mystery (of redemp-
tion, i. g., the gospel) in order that by the Church should be made
known the manifold wisdom of God. Such is the natural connec-
tion of the passage, and such is the interpretation adopted by modern
commentators entirely irrespective of the bearing of the passage on
the supralapsarian controversy. (5.) It is a further objection to
the supralapsarian scheme that it is not consistent with the Scrip-
tural exhibition of the character of God. He is declared to be a
God of mercy and justice. But it is not compatible with these
divine attributes that men should be foreordained to misery and
eternal death as innocent, that is, before they had apostatized from
God. If passed by and foi'eordained to death /o7* their sins, it must
be that in predestination they are contemplated as guilty and fallen
creatures.
§ 3. Tnfralapsarianism.
According to the infralapsarian doctrine, God, with the design to
reveal his own glory, that is, the perfections of his own nature,
determined to create the world ; secondly, to permit the fall of
320 PART m. ch. l — the plan of salvation.
man ; thirdly, to elect from the mass of fallen men a multitude
whom no man could number as " vessels of mercy ; " fourthly, to
send his Son for their redemption ; and, fifthly, to leave the residue
of mankind, as He left the fallen angels, to suffer the just punish-
ment of their sins.
The arguments in favour of this view of the divine plan have
already been presented in the form of objections to the supralapsa-
rian theory. It may, however, be further remarked, —
1. That this view is self-consistent and harmonious. As all the
decrees of God are one comprehensive purpose, no view of the rela-
tion of the details embraced in that purpose which does not admit of
their being reduced to unity can be admitted. In every great mech-
anism, whatever the number or complexity of its parts, there must
be unity of design. Every part bears a given relation to every other
part, and the perception of that relation is necessary to a proper
understanding of the whole. Again, as the decrees of God are
eternal and immutable, no view of his plan of operation which
supposes Him to purpose first one thing and then another can bo
consistent with their nature. And as God is absolutely sovereign
and independent, all his purposes must be determined from within
or according to the counsel of his own will. They cannot be sup-
posed to be contingent or suspended on the action of his creatures,
or upon anything out of Himself The infralapsarian scheme, as
held by most Augustinians, fulfils all these conditions. All the
particulars form one comprehensive whole. All follow in an order
which supposes no change of purpose ; and all depend on the infi-
nitely wise, holy, and righteous will of God. The final end is the
glory of God. For that end He creates the world, allows the fall ;
from among fallen men He elects some to everlasting life, and
leaves the rest to the just recompense of their sins. Whom He
elects He calls, justifies, and glorifies. This is the golden chain
the links of which cannot be separated or transposed. This is the
form in which the scheme of redemption lay in the Apostle's mind
as he teaches us in Rom. viii. 29, 30.
Different Meanings assigned the Word Predestination.
2. There is an ambiguity in the word predestination. It may be
used, first, in the general sense of foreordination. In this sense it
has equal reference to all events ; for God foreordains whatever
comes to pass. Secondly, it may refer to the general purpose
of redemption without reference to particular individuals. God
predetermined to reveal his attributes in redeeming sinners, as He
§4.] "HYPOTHETICAL REDEMPTION." 321
predetermined to create the heavens and the earth to manifest his
power, wisdom, and benevolence. Thirdly, it is used in theology
generally to express the purpose of God in relation to the salvation
of individual men. It includes the selection of one portion of the
race to be saved, and the leaving the rest to perish in sin. It is in
this sense used by supralapsarians, who teach that God selected a
certain number of individual men to be created in order to salvation,
and a certain number to be created to be vessels of wrath. It is in
this way they subordinate creation to predestination as a means to
an end. It is to this that infralapsarians object as inconceivable,
repugnant to the nature of God, and unscriptural. Taking the
word predestination, however, in the second of the senses above
mentioned, it may be admitted that it precedes in the order of
thought the purpose to create. This view is perfectly consistent with
the doctrine which makes man as created and fallen the object of
predestination in the third and commonly received meaning of the
word. The Apostle teaches in Col. i. 16, that all things visible
and invisible were created by and for Him who is the image of the
invisible God, who is before all things, by whom all things consist,
and who is the head of the body, the Church. The end of creation,
therefore, is not merely the glory of God, but the special manifes-
tation of that glory in the person and work of Christ. As He is
the Alpha, so also is He the Omega ; the beginning and the end.
Having this great end in view, the revelation of Himself in the
person and work of his Son, He purposed to create, to permit the
fall, to elect some to be the subjects of his grace and to leave others
in their sin. This view, as it seems, agrees with the representations
of the Scriptures, and avoids the difficulties connected with the
strict supralapsarian doctrine. It is to be borne in mind that the
object of these speculations is not to pry into the operation of the
divine mind, but simply to ascertain and exhibit the relation in
which the several truths revealed in Scripture concerning the plan
of redemption bear to each other.
§ 4. " Hypothetical Redemption.''^
According to the common doctrine of Augustinians, as expressed
in the Westminster Catechism, " God, having .... elected some
to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them
out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate
of salvation by a Redeemer." In opposition to this view some of
the Reformed theologians of the seventeenth centurv introduced the
scheme which is known in the history of theology as the doctrine
VOL. II. 21
32-2 PART III. Ch. I — the plan OF SALVATION.
of hypothetical redemption. The principal advocate of this doctrine
was Amjraut (died 1664), Professor in the French Protestant
Seminary at Saumur. He taught, (1.) That the motive impelMno-
God to redeem men was benevolence, or love to men in o-eneral.
(2.) From this motive He sent His Son to make the salvation of
all men possible. (3.) God, in virtue of a deeretum. universale
hi/potheticum, offers salvation to all men if they believe in Christ.
(4.) All men have a natural ability to repent and believe.
(5.) But as this natural ability was counteracted by a moral ina-
bility, God determined to give his efficacious grace to a certain
number of the human race, and thus to secure their salvation.
This scheme is sometimes designated as " universalismus hypo-
theticus." It was designed to take a middle ground between Au-
gustinianism and Arminianism. It is liable to the objections which
press on both systems. It does not remove the peculiar difficulties
of Augustinianism, as it asserts the sovereignty of God in election.
Besides, it leaves the case of the heathen out of view. They,
having no knowledge of Christ, could not avail themselves of this
decretum liypotheticum, and therefore must be considered as passed
over by a decretum absolutum. It was against this doctrine of
Amyraut and other departures from the standards of the Reformed
Church that, in 1675, the "Formula Consensus Helvetica" was
adopted by the churches of Switzerland. This theory of the French
theologians soon passed away as far as the Reformed churches in
Europe were concerned. Its advocates either returned to the old
doctrine, or passed on to the more advanced system of the Armin-
ians. In this country it has been revived and extensively adopted.
At first view it might seem a small matter whether we say that
election precedes redemption or that redemption precedes election.
In fact, however, it is .a question of great importance. The relation
of the truths of the Bible is determined by their nature. If you
change their relation you must change their nature. If you regard
the sun as a planet instead of as the centre of our system you must
believe it to be something very different in its constitution from
what it actually is. So in a scheme of thought, if you make the
final cause a means, or a means the final cause, nothing but confusion
can be the result. As the relation of election to redemption depends
on the nature of redemption the full consideration of this question
must be reserved until the work of Christ has been considered.
For the present it is sufficient to say that the scheme proposed by
the French theologians is liable to the following objections.
§4.] "HYPOTHETICAL REDEMPTION." 323
Arguments against this Scheme.
1. It supposes mutability in the divine purposes ; or that the
purpose of God may fail of accomplishment. According to this
scheme, God, oiit of benevolence or philanthropy, purposed the
salvation of all men, and sent his Son for their redemption. But
seeing that such purpose could not be carried out, He determined
by his efficacious grace to secure the salvation of a certain portion
of the human race. This difficulty the scheme involves, however
it may be stated. It cannot hovv^ever be supposed that God intends
what is never accomplished ; that He purposes what He does not
intend to effect ; that He adopts means for an end which is never
to be attained. This cannot be affirmed of any rational being who
has the wisdom and power to secure the execution of his purposes.
Much less can it be said of Him whose power and wisdom are infinite.
If all men are not saved, God never purposed their salvation, and
never devised and put into operation means designed to accomplish
that end. We must assume that the result is the interpretation of
the purposes of God. If He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass,
then events correspond to his purposes ; and it is against reason
and Scripture to suppose that there is any contradiction or want of ^
correspondence between what He intended and what actually occurs.
The tlieory, therefore, which assumes that God purposed the salva-
tion of all men, and sent his Son to die as a means to accomplish
that end, and then seeing, or foreseeing that such end could not
or would not be attained, elected a part of the race to be the subjects
of efficacious grace, cannot be admitted as Scriptural.
2. The Bible clearly teaches that tlie work of Christ is certainly
efficacious. It renders certain the attainment of the end it was
designed to accomplish. It was intended to save his people, and
not merely to make the salvation of all men possible. It was a real
satisfaction to justice, and therefore necessarily frees from condem-
nation. It was a ransom paid and accepted, and therefore certainly
redeems. If, therefore, equally designed for all men, it must secure
the salvation of all. If designed specially for the elect, it renders
their salvation certain, and therefore election precedes redemption.
God, as tlie Westminster Catechism teaches, having elected some to
eternal life, sent his Son to redeem them.
3. The Scriptures further teach that the gift of Christ secures
the gift of all other saving blessings. "He that spared not his own
Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him
also freely give us all things." (Rom. viii. 32.) Hence they are
324 PART III. Ch. I. — the plan OF SALVAITON.
certainly saved for whom God delivered up liis Son. The elect
only are saved, and therefore He was delivered up specially for
them, and consequently election must precede redemption. The
relation, therefore, of redemption to election is as clearly determined
by the nature of redemption as the relation of the sun to the planets
is determined by the nature of the sun.
4. The Bible in numerous passages directly asserts that Christ
came to redeem his people ; to save them from their sins ; and to
bring them to God. He gave Himself for his Church ; He laid
down his life for his sheep. As the end precedes the means, if
God sent his Son to save his people, if Christ gave Himself for his
Church, then his people were selected and present to the divine
mind, in the order of thought, prior to the gift of Christ.
5. If, as Paul teaches (Rom. viii. 29, 30), foreknowledge pre-
cedes predestination, and if the mission of Christ is the means of
accomplishing the end of predestination, then of necessity predesti-
nation to eternal life precedes the gift of Christ. Having, as we
are taught in Eph. i. 4, 5, predestinated us to the adopticm of sons,
God chose us before the foundation of the world, and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. This is the order of the divine
purposes, or the mutual relation of the truths of redemption as
presented in the Scriptures.
6. The motive (so to speak) of God in sending his Son is not,
as this theory assumes, general benevolence or that love of which
all men are equally the objects, but that peculiar, mysterious, infinite
love in which God, in giving his Son, gives Himself and all con-
ceivable and possible good. All these points, however, as before
remarked, ask for further consideration when we come to treat of
the nature and design of Christ's work.
§ 5. The Lutheran Doctrine as to the Plan of Salvation.
It is not easy to give the Lutlieran doctrine on this subject,
because it is stated in one way in the early symbolical books of
that Church, and in a somewhat different way in the " Form of
Concord," and in the writings of the standard Lutheran theologians.
Luther himself taught the strict Augustinian doctrine, as did also
Melancthon in the first edition of his " Loci Communes." In the
later editions of that work Melancthon taught that men cooperate
with the grace of God in conversion, and that the reason why one
man is regenerated and another not is to be found in that coopera-
tion. This gave rise to the protracted and vehement synergistic
controversy, which for a long time seriously disturbed the peace of
§5.] THE LUTHERAN DOCTEINE. 325
the Lutheran Church. This controversy was for a time authorita-
tively settled by the " Form of Concord," which was adopted and
enjoined as a standard of orthodoxy by the Lutherans. In this
document both the doctrine of cooperation and that of absolute
predestination were rejected. It taught the entire inability of tlie
natural man for anything spiritually good ; and therefore denied
that he could either prepare himself for regeneration or cooperate
with the grace of God in that work. It refers the regeneration of
tlie sinner exclusively to the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit.
It is the work of God, and in no sense or degree the work of man.
But it teaches that the grace of God may be effectually resisted,
and that the reason why all who hear the gospel are not saved is
that some do thus resist the influence which is brought to bear upon
them, and others do not. While, therefore, regeneration is exclu-
sively the work of the Spirit, the failure of salvation is to be referred
to the voluntary resistance of offered grace. As this system was
illogical and contrary to the clear declarations of Scripture, it did
not long maintain its ground. Non-resistance to the grace of God,
passively yielding to its power, is something good. It is something
by which one class is favourably distinguished from another ; and
therefore the reason why they, rather than others, are saved, is to
be referred to themselves and not to God, who gives the same grace
to all. The later Lutheran theologians, therefore, have abandoned
the ground of the " Form of Concord," and teach that the objects
of election are those whom God foresaw would believe and persevere
in faith unto the end,
According to this scheme, God, (1.) From general benevolence
or love to the fjillen race of man, wills their salvation by a sincere
purpose and intention. " Benevolentia Dei universalis," says Hol-
laz, " non est inane votum, non sterilis velleitas, non otiosa compla-
centia, qua quis rem, quse sibi placet, et quam in se amat, non cupit
efficere aut consequi adeoque mediis ad hunc finem ducentibus non
vult uti ; sed est voluntas efficax, qua Deus salutem hominum, arden-
tissime amatam, etiam eflKcere atque per media sufficientia et efficacia
^ consequi serio intendit." ^ (2.) To give effect to this general jnir-
» pose of benevolence and mercy towards men indiscriminately, God
H determined to send his Son to make a full satisfaction for their sins.
I (3.) To this follows (in the order of thought) the purpose to give
^L to all men the means of salvation and the power to avail themselves
^H of the offered mercy. This is described as a " destinatio mediorum,
^H quibus turn aeterna salus satisfactione Christi parta, turn vires cre-
^^B^ 1 Examen Theologkum Acroamaticum, Leipzig, 1763, p. 599.
326 PART III. Ch. L— the plan OF SALVATION.
dendi omnibus homlnibus offeruntur, ut satisfactionem Cliristi ad
salutem acceptare et sibi applicare queant." ^ (4.) Besides this,
voluntas generalis (as relating to all men) and antecedens, as going
before any contemplated action of men, there is a voluntas specialise
as relating to certain individual men, and consequens^ as following
the foresight of their action. This voluntas specialis is defined as
that " quae peccatores oblata salutis media amplectentes aterna
salute donare constituit."^ So Hutter^ says, "Quia (Dens)
praevidit ac praescivit maximam mundi partem mediis salutis locum
minime relicturam ac proinde in Christum non credituram, ideo
Deus de illis tantum salvandis fecit decretum, quos actu in Chris-
tum credituros praBvidit." Hollaz expresses the same view:*
" Electio homlnum, peccato corruptorum, ad vitam eeternam a Deo
misericordlssimo facta est intuitu fidei in Christum ad finem usque
•vitae perse verantis." Again; " Simpliciter quippe et categorice
decrevit Deus hunc, ilium, istum hominem salvare, quia perseve-
ranter ipsius in Christum fidem certo praevidit."^
The Lutheran doctrine, therefore, answers the question, Why
one man is saved and another not ? by saying, Because the one
believes and the other does not. The question, Why God elects
some and not others, and predestinates them to eternal life ? is
answered by saying. Because He foresees that some will believe
unto the end, and others will not. If asked, Why one believes and
another not? the answer is. Not that one cooperates with the grace
of God and the other does not ; but that some resist and reject the
grace offered to all, and others do not. The difficulty arising from
the Lutheran doctrine of the entire corruption of our fallen nature,
and the entire inability of the sinner to do anything spiritually good,
is met by saying, that the sinner has power to use the means of
grace, he can hear the word and receive the sacraments, and as
these means of grace are imbued with a divine supernatural power,
they produce a saving effect upon all who do not voluntarily
and persistently resist their influence. Baptism, in the case of
infants, is attended by the regeneration of the soul ; and therefore
all who are baptized in infancy have a principle of grace implanted
in them, which, if cherished, or, if not voluntarily quenched, secures
their salvation. Predestination in the Lutheran system is confined
to the elect. God predestinates those whom He foresees will
1 HoUaz, see Die Dogmalih der Evntigelisch-Lulherischen Kirche, von Heinrich Schmid,
Dr. und Professor der Theologie in Erlangen, 3d edition Erlangeii, 1853, p. 221.
2 Schmid, p. 214. s Schmid, p. 226.
•4 Kxamen, p. 619. ^ Schmid, p. 228.
\
§6.] THE REMONSTRANT DOCTRINE. 327
persevere in faith unto salvation. There is no predestination of
unbeHevers unto death.
§ 6. The Remonstrant Doctrine.
In the early part of the seventeenth century Arminius intro-
duced a new system of doctrine in the Reformed churches of Hol-
land, which was formally condemned by the Synod of Dort which
sat from November 1618 to May 1619. Against the decisions of
that Synod the advocates of the new doctrine presented a Remon-
strance, and hence they were at first called Remonstrants, but in
after years their more common designation has been Arminians.
Arminianism is a much lower form of doctrine than Lutheranism.
In all the points included under Anthropology and Soteriology it
is a much more serious departure from the system of Augustinian-
ism which in all ages has been the life of the church. The Ar-
minians taught, —
1. That all men derive from Adam a corrupt nature by which
they are inclined to sin. But they deny that this corruption is of
the nature of sin. Men are responsible only for their own volun-
tary acts and the consequences of such acts. " Peccatum originale
nee habent (Remonstrantes) pro peccato proprie dicto .... nee
pro malo, quod per modum proprie dictse poenae ab Adamo in pos-
teros dimanet, sed pro malo infirmitate."^ Limborch^ says, " At-
qui ilia physica est impuritas (namely, the deterioration of our
nature derived from Adam), non moralis: et tantum abest ut sit
vere ac proprie dictum peccatum."
2. They deny that man by his fall has lost his ability to good.
Such ability, or liberty as they call it, is essential to our nature, and
cannot be lost without the loss of humanity. " Innatam arbitrii
humani libertatem (J,, e., ability) olim semel in creatione datam,
nunquam .... tollit (Deus)."^
3. This ability, however, is not of itself sufficient to secure the
return of the soul to God. Men need the preventing, exciting,
and assisting grace of God in order to their conversion and holy
living. " Gratiam Dei statuimus esse principium, progressum et
complementum omnis boni : adeo ut ne ipse quidem regenitus
absque praecedente ista, sive prgeveniente, excitante, prosequente
et cooperante gratia, bonum* ullum salutare cogitare, velle, aut
peragere possit."*
1 Apologia pro Confessione Remonstraniium, edit. Leyden, 1630, p. 84.
2 Theologia Christiana, v. xv. 15, edit. Amsterdam, 1715, p. 439.
8 Confessio Remonstrantium, vi. 6 ; Episcopii Opera, edit. Rotterdam, 1665, vol. ii. part 2,
p. 80.
* Ibid. xvii. 6 ; ut supra, p. 88.
328 PART III. Ch. L — the plan OF SALVATION.
4. This divine grace is afforded to all men in sufficient measure
to enable them to repent, believe, and keep all the commandments
of God. " Gratia efficax vocatur ex eventu. Ut statuatur gratia
habere ex se sufficientem vim, ad producendum consensum in vo-
luntate, sed quia vis ilia partialis est, non posse exire in actum sive
effectum sortiri sine cooperatione liberae voluntatis humanse, ac
proinde ut effectum habeat, .... pendere a libera voluntate." ^
This grace, says Limborch, " incitat, exstimulat, adjuvat et corro-
borat, quantum satis est, ut homo reipsa Deo obediat et ad finem
in obedientia perseveret." And again :^ "Sufficiens vocatio, quando
per cooperationem liberi arbitrii sortitur suum effectum, vocatur
efficax."
5. Those who of their own free will, and in the exercise of that
ability which belongs to them since the fall, cooperate with this
divine grace, are converted, and saved. " Etsi vero maxima est
gratis disparitas, pro Uberrima scilicet voluntatis divinae dispensa-
tione tamen Spiritus Sanctus omnibus et singulis, quibus verbum
fidei ordinarie prtedicatur, tantum gratige confert, aut saltem con-
ferre paratus est, quantum ad fidem ingenerandum, et ad promo-
vendum suis gradibus salutarem ipsorum conversionem sufficit." ^
The Apology for the Remonstrance, and especially the Remon-
strant Theologians, as Episcopius and Limborch, go farther than
this. Instead of limiting this sufficient grace to those who hear
the gospel, they extend it to all mankind.
6. Those who thus believe are predestinated to eternal life, not
however as individuals, but as a class. The decree of election
does not concern persons, it is simply the purpose of God to save
believers. " Decretum vocant Remonstrantes decretum prredesti-
nationis ad salutem, quia eo decernitur, qua ratione et conditione
Deus peccatores saluti destinet. Enunciatur autem hoc decretum
Dei hac formula : Deus decrevit salvai'c credentes, non quasi cre-
dentes quidam re ipsa jam sint, qui objiciantur Deo salvare volenti,
sive prsedestinanti ; nihil minus ; sed, ut quid in iis, circa quos
Deus prsedestinans versatur, requiratur, ista enunciatione clare
significetur. Tantundem enim valet atqui si diceres, Deus decrevit
homines salvare sub conditione fidei Etiamsi hujusmodi
praedestinatio non sit praedestinatio certarum personarum, est tamen
omnium hominum praedestinatio, si modo credant et m vu'tute
praedestinatio certarum personarum, q\ue et quando credunt."*
1 Apohffia pro Confesdone Remonstrantiicm, p. 162.
2 Theoiogia, iv. xii. 8; p. 352.
3 Confessio Rtmonslrnntiiim, xvii. 8; p. 89.
* Apologia pro Confessione Remonstrctndum, p. 102.
§ 7.] WESLEYAN ARMINIANISM. 329
§ 7. Wesleyan Armintanism.
The Arminian system received such modifications in the hands
of Wesley and his associates and followers, that they give it the
designation of Evangelical Arminianism, and claim for it original-
ity and completeness. It differs from the system of the Remon-
strants, —
1. In admitting that man since the fall is in a state of absolute
or entire pollution and depravit3\ Original sin is not a mere
physical deterioration of our nature, but entire moral depravity.
2. In denying that men in this state of nature have any power
to cooperate with the grace of God. The advocates of this system
regard this doctrine of natural ability, or the ability of the natural
man to cooperate with the grace of God as Semi-pelagian, and the
doctrine that men have the power by nature perfectly to keep the
commandments of God, as pure Pelagianism.^
8. In asserting that the guilt brought upon all men by the sin
of Adam is removed by the justification which has come upon all
men by the righteousness of Christ.
4. That the ability of man even to cooperate with the Spirit of
God, is due not to anything belonging to his natural state as fallen,
but to the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. Every
infant, therefore, comes into the world free from condemnation on
the ground of the righteousness of Christ., and with a seed of divine
grace, or a principle of a new life implanted in his heart. " That
by the offence of one," says Wesley,'-^ "judgment came upon all
men (all born into the world) unto condemnation, is an undoubted
truth, and affects every infant, as well as every adult person. But
it is equally true, that by the righteousness of one, the free gift
came upon all men (all born into the world — infants and adults)
unto justification." And Fletcher,^ says, " As Adam brought a
general condemnation and a universal seed of death upon all in-
fants, so Christ brings upon them a general justification and a uni-
versal seed of life." " Every human being," says Warren, " has
a measure of grace (unless he has cast it away), and those who
faithfully use this gracious gift, will be accepted of God in the day
of judgment, whether Jew or Greek, Christian or Heathen. In
virtue of the mediation of Jesus Christ, between God and our fallen
race, all men since the promise Gen. iii. 15, are under an economy
of grace, and the only difference between them as subjects of the
1 W. F. Warren, System. Theoloffie, Erste Lieferung, Hamburg, p. 145.
2 Wwks, vii. p. 97. 8 Works, i. pp. 284, 285.
330 PART m. Ch. I — the plajt of salvation.
moral government of God, is that while all have grace and light
enough to attain salvation, some, over and above this, have more
and others less."^ Wesley says, " No man living is without some
preventing grace, and every degree of grace is a degree of life."
And in another place, " I assert that there is a measure of free
will supernaturally restored to every man, together with that super-
natural light which enlightens every man that cometh into the
world." 2
According to this view of the plan of God, he decreed or pur-
posed, (1.) To permit the fall of man. (2.) To send his Son to
make a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. (3.) On
the ground of that satisfaction to remit the guilt of Adam's first
transgression and of original sin, and to impart such a measure of
grace and light to all and every man as to enable all to attain eter-
nal life. (4.) Those who duly improve that grace, and persevere
to the end, are ordained to be saved : God purposes from eternity,
to save those whom He foresees Avill thus persevere in faith and
holy living.
It is plain that the main point of difference between the later
Lutheran, the Arminian, and the Wesleyan schemes, and that of
Augustinians is, that according to the latter, God, and according
to the former, man, determines who are to be saved. Augustine
taught that out of the fallen family of men, all of whom might
have been justly left to perish in their apostasy, God, out of his
mere good mercy, elected some to everlasting life, sent his Son for
their redemption, and gives to them the Holy Spirit to secure their
repentance, faith, and holy living unto the end. " Cur autem non
omnibus detur [donum fidei], fidelem movere non debet, qui credit
ex uno omnes isse in condemnationem, sine dubio justissimam : ita
ut nulla Dei esset justa reprehensio, etiamsi nullus inde liberaretur.
Unde constat, magnam esse gratiam, quod plurimi liberantur." ^
It is God, therefore, and not man, who determines who are to be
saved. Although this may be said to be the turning point between
these great systems, which have divided the Church in all ages,
yet that point of necessity involves all the other matters of differ-
ence ; namely, the nature of original sin ; the motive of God in
providing redemption ; the nature and design of the work of Christ;
and the nature of divine grace, or the work of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, in a great measure, the whole system of theology,- and of
1 Warren, p. 146.
2 Works, vii. p. 97 ; vi. p 42. Fletcher, i. p. 137, ff. etc.
8 Augustine, De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, viii. 16 ; Works, edit. Benedictines, vol. x
p. 1361, c.
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 331
necessity the character of our religion, depend upon the view taken
of this particular question. It is, therefore, a question of the high-
est practical importance, and not a matter of idle speculation.
§ 8. The Augustinian Scheme.
Preliminary Reniarhs.
It is to be remembered that the question is not which view of
the plan of God is the freest from difficulties, the most agreeable to
our natural feelings, and therefore the most plausible to the human
mind. It may be admitted that it would appear to us more con-
sistent with the character of God that provision should be made
for the salvation of all men, and that sufficient knowledge and
grace should be granted to every human being to secure his salva-
tion. So it would be more consistent with the natural understand-
ing and feelings, if like provision had been made for the fallen
angels ; or if God had prevented the entrance of sin and misery
into the universe ; or if, when they had entered, He had provided
for their ultimate elimination from the system, so that all rational
creatures should be perfectly holy and happy for eternity. There
would be no end to such plans if each one were at liberty to con-
struct a scheme of divine operation according to his own views of
what would be wisest and best. We are shut up to facts : the
facts of providence, of the Bible, and of religious experience.
These facts must determine our theory. We cannot say that the
goodness of God forbids the permission of sin and misery, if sin
and misery actually exist. We cannot say that justice requires
that all rational creatures should be treated alike, have the same
advantages, and the same opportunity to secure knowledge, holi-
ness, and happiness, if, under the government of a God of infinite
justice, the greatest disparity actually exists. Among all Chris-
tians certain principles are admitted, according to which the facts
of history and of the Scriptures must be interpreted.
1. It is admitted that God reigns ; that his providence extends
to all events great and small, so that nothing does or can occur
contrary to his will, or which He does not either effect by his own
power, or permit to be done by other agents. This is a truth of
natural religion as well as of revelation. It is (practically) uni-
versally-recognized. The prayers and thanksgivings which men
by a law of their nature address to God, assume that He controls
all events. War, pestilence, and famine, are deprecated as mani-
festations of his displeasure. To Him all men turn for deliverance
332 PART III. Ch. L — the plan OF SALVATION.
from tliese evils. Peace, health, and plenty, are universally rec-
ognized as his gifts. This truth lies at the foundation of all religion,
and cannot be questioned by any Theist, much less by any Chris-
tian.
2. No less clear and universally admitted is the principle that
God can control the free acts of rational creatures without destroy-
ing either their liberty or their responsibility. Men universally
pray for deliverance from the wrath of their enemies, that their en-
mity may be turned aside, or that the state of their minds may be
changed. All Christians pray that God would change the hearts
of men, give them repentance and faith, and so control their acts
that his glory and the good of others may be promoted. This
again is one of those simple, profound, and far-reaching truths,
which men take for granted, and on which they act and cannot
avoid acting, whatever may be the doubts of philosophers, or the
speculative difficulties with which such truths are attended.
3. All Christians admit that God has a plan or purpose in the
government of the world. There is an end to be accomplished.
It is inconceivable that an infinitely wise Being should create, sus-
tain, and control the universe, without contemplating any end to
be attained by this wonderful manifestation of his power and re-
sources. The Bible, therefore, teaches us that God works all
things after the counsel of his own will. And this truth is incor-
porated in all the systems of faith adopted among Christians, and
is assumed in all religious worship and experience.
4. It is a necessary corollary from the foregoing principles that
the facts of history are the interpretation of the eternal purposes
of God. Whatever actually occurs entered into his purpose. We
can, therefore, learn the design or intention of God from the
evolution or development of his plan in the history of the world,
and of every individual man. Whatever occurs. He for wise
reasons permits to occur. He can prevent whatever He sees fit
to prevent. If, therefore, sin occurs, it was God's design that it
should occur. If misery follows in the train of sin, such was
God's purpose. If some men only are saved, while others per-
ish, such must have entered into the all comprehending purpose
of God. It is not possible for any finite mind to comprehend the
designs of God, or to see the reasons of his dispensations. But we
cannot, on that account, deny that He governs all things, or that
He rules according to the connsel of his own will.
The Auo-iistinian svstem of doctrine is nothiiiij; more- than the
application of these general and almost univeisully recognized prin-
ciples to the special case of the salvat'on of man.
§ 8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. • 333
Statement of the Doctrine.
The Augustinian scheme includes the following points : (1.)
That the glory of God, or the manifestation of his perfections, is
the highest and ultimate end of all tilings. (2.) For that end
God purposed the creation of the universe, and the whole plan of
providence and redemption. (3.) Tiiat He placed man in a state
of probation, making Adam, their first parent, their head and rep-
resentative. (4.) That the fall of Adam brought all his posterity
into a state of condemnation, sin, and misery, from which they are
utterly unable to deliver tiiemselves. (5.) From the mass of
fallen men God elected a number innumerable to eternal life, and
left the rest of mankind to the just recompense of their sins.
(6.) That the ground of this election is not the foresight of any-
thing in the one class to distinguish them favourably from the mem-
bers of the other plass, but the good pleasure of God. (7.) That
for the salvation of those thus chosen to eternal life, God gave his
own Son, to become man, aiid to obey and suffer for his people,
thus making a full satisfaction for sin and bringing in everlasting
righteousness, rendering the ultimate salvation of the elect abso-
lutely certain. (8.) That while tiie Holy Spirit, in his common
operations, is present with every man, so long as he lives, restrain-
ing evil and excitinor ffood, his certainlv efficacious and saving
power is exercised only in behalf of the elect. (9.) That all those
whom God has thus chosen to life, and for whom Christ specially
gave Himself in the covenant of redemption, shall certainly (un-
less they die in infancy), be brought to the knowledge of the truth,
to the exercise of faith, and to perseverance in holy living unto
the end.
Such is the great scheme of doctrine known in history as the
Pauline, Augustinian, or Calvinistic, taught, as We believe, in the
Scriptures, developed by Augustine, formally sanctioned by the
Latin Church, adhered to by the witnesses of the truth during
the Middle Ages, repudiated by the Church of Rome in the Coun-
cil of Trent, revived in that Churcii by the Jansenists, adopted by
all the Reformers, incorporated in the creeds of the Protestant
Churches of Switzerland, of the Palatinate, of France, Holland,
England, and Scotland, and unfolded in the Standards framed by
the Westminster Assembly, the common representative of Presby-
terians in Europe and America.
It is a historical fact that this scheme of doctrine has been the
moving power in the Church; that largely to it are to be referred
334 PART III. Ch. I— the plan OF SALVATION.
the intellectual vigour and spiritual life of the heroes and confes-
sors who have been raised up in the course of ages ; that it has
been the fruitful source of good works, of civil and religious lib-
erty, and of human progress. Its truth may be evinced from
many different sources.
Proof of the Doctrine.
In the first place, it is a simple, harmonious, self-consistent
scheme. It supposes no conflicting purposes in the divine mind ;
no willing first one thing, and then another; no purposing ends
which are never accomplished ; and no assertion of principles in
conflict with others which cannot be denied. All the parts of this
vast ])lan admit of being reduced to one comprehensive purpose as
it was hid for ages in the divine mind. The purpose to create, to
permit the fall, to elect some to everlasting life, while others are
left, to send his Son to redeem his people, and to give the Spirit
to apply that redemption, are purposes which harmonize one with
all the others, and form one consistent plan. The parts of this
scheme are not only harmonious, but they are also connected in
such a way that the one involves the others, so that if one be
proved it involves the truth of all the rest. If Christ was given
for the redemption of his people, then their redemption is rendered
certain, and then the operations of the Spirit must, in their case,
be certainly efficacious ; and if such be the design of the work
of Clirist, and the nature of the Spirit's influence, then those
who are the objects of the one, and the subjects of the other, must
persevere in holiness unto the end. Or if we begin with any
other of the principles aforesaid, the same result follows. If it
be proved or conceded that the fiiU brought mankind into an
estate of helpless sin and misery, then it follows that salvation
must be of grace ; that it is of God and not of us, that we are
in Christ ; that vocation is effectual ; that election is of the good
pleasure of God ; that the sacrifice of Christ renders certain the
salvation of his people ; and that they cannot fatally fall away
from God. So of all the rest. Admit that the death of Christ
renders certain the salvation of his people, and all the rest follows.
Admit that election is not of works, and the whole plan must
be admitted as true. Admit that nothing happens contrary to
God's purposes, then again the whole Augustinian scheme must be
admitted. There can scarcely be a clearer proof that we under-
stand a complicated machine than that we can put together its sev-
eral parts, so that each exactly fits its place ; no one admitting of
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 335
being transferred or substituted for another ; and the whole being
complete and unimpeded in its action. Such is the order of God's
working, that if you give a naturalist a single bone, he can con-
struct the whole skeleton of which it is a part ; and such is the
order of his plan of redemption, that if one of the great truths
which it includes be admitted, all the rest must be accepted. This
is the first great argument in suppoi't of the Pauline or Augustin-
ian scheme of doctrine.
Argument from the Facts of Providence.
In the second place, this scheme alone is consistent with the
facts of God's providence. Obvious as the truth is, it needs to be
constantly repeated, that it is useless to contend against facts. If
a thing is, it is vain to ignore it, or to deny its significance. We
must conform our theories to facts, and not make tiie facts conform
to our theories. That view of divine truth, therefore, is correct
which accords with the facts of God's providence ; and that view
of doctrine must be false which conflicts wirfi those facts. An-
other principle no less plain, and no less apt to be forgotten, is the
one assumed above as admitted by all Christians, namely, that
God has a plan and that the events of his providence correspond
with that plan. In other words, that whatever happens, God in-
tended should happen ; that to Him nothing can be unexpected,
and nothing contrary to his purposes. If this be so, then we can
learn Avith certainty what God's plan is, what He intended to do
or to permit, from what actually comes to pass. If one portion of
the inhabitants of a given country die in infancy, and another por-
tion live to mature age ; such was, for wise reasons, the purpose of
God. If some are prosperous, and others miserable, such also is
in accordance with his holy will. If one season is abundant, an-
other the reverse, it is so in virtue of his appointment. This is a
dictate even of natural religion. As much as this even the heathen
believe.
It can hardly be doubted that if these simple principles be
granted, the truth of the Augustinian scheme must be admitted.
It is a fact that God created man ; it is a fact that the fall of Adam
involved our whole race in sin and misery ; it is a fact that of this
fallen family, some are saved and others perish ; it is a fact that
the salvation of those who actually attain eternal life, is secured
by the mediation of Christ, luid the work of the Holy Spirit.
These are })rovidential facts admitted by all Christians. All that
Augustiniaiiism teaches is, that these facts were not unexpected
336 PART III. Ch. L — the plan OF SALTATION.
by the divine mind, but that God foreknew they would occur, and
intended that they should come to pass. This is all. What actu-
ally does happen, God intended should happen. Although his pur-
poses or intentions cannot fail, He uses no influence to secure their
accomplishment, which is incompatible with the perfect liberty and
entire responsibility of rational creatures. As God is infinite in
power and wisdom, He can control all events, and therefore the
course of events must be in accordance with his will, because He
can mould or direct that course at pleasure. It is, therefore, evi-
dent, first, that events must be the interpretation of his purposes,
i. e., of what He intends shall happen ; and secondly, that no
objection can bear against the purpose or decrees of God, which
does not bear equally against his providence. If it be right that
God should permit an event to happen, it must be right that He
should purpose to permit it, i. e., that He should decree its occur-
rence. We may suppose the Deistic or Rationalistic view of God's
relation to the world to be true ; that God created men, and left
them without any providential guidance, or any supernatural influ-
'ence, to the unrestrained exercise of their own faculties, and to the
operation of the laws of nature and of society. If this were so,
a certain course of events in regular succession, and in every vari-
ety of combination, would as a matter of fact, actually occur. In
this case there could be no pretence that God was responsible for
the issue. He had created man, endowed him with all the facul-
ties, and surrounded him by all the circumstances necessary for his
highest welfare. If he chose to abuse his faculties, and neglect
his opportunities, it would be his own fault. He could bring no
just complaint against his maker. We may further suppose that
God, overlooking and foreseeing how men left to themselves would
act, and what would be the issue of a universe conducted on this
plan, should determine, for wise reasons, that it should become
actual ; that just such a world and just such a series of events
should really occur. Would this be wrong ? Or, would it make
any difference, if God's purpose as to the futurition of such a world,
instead o? following the foresight of it, should precede it? In
either case God would purpose precisely the same world, and the
same course of events. Augustinianism supposes that God for his
own glory, and therefore for the highest and most beneficent of all
ends, did purpose such a world and such a series of events as
would have occurred on the Deistical hypothesis, with two impor-
tant exceptions. First, He interposes to restrain and guide the
wickedness of men so as to prevent its producing unmitigated evil,
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 337
and to cause it to minister to the production of good. And sec-
ondly, He intervenes by his providence, and by the work of Christ
and of the Holy Spirit, to save innumerable souls from the deluge
of destruction. The Augustinian system, therefore, is nothing
but the assumption that God intended in eternity what He actually
does in time. That system, therefore, is in accordance with all the
facts of divine providence, and thus is founded on an immovable
basis.
Sovereignty of God in the Dispensations of his Providence.
There is, however, another view which must be taken of tliis sub-
ject. Augustinianism is founded on the assumption of the sovereignty
of God. It supposes that it belongs to Him, in virtue of his own
perfection, in virtue of his relation to the universe as its creator and
preserver, and of his relation to the world of sinners as their ruler
and judge, to deal with them according to his own good pleasure ;
that He can rightfully pardon some and condemn others ; can
rightfully give his saving grace to one and not to another; and,
therefore, that it is of Him, and not of man, that one and not another
is made a partaker of eternal life. On the other hand, all anti-
Augustinian systems assume that God is bound to provide salvation
for all ; to give sufficient grace to all ; and to leave the question of
salvation and perdition to be determined by each man for himself.
We are not condemned criminals of whom the sovereign may right-
fully pardon some and not others ; but rational creatures, having all
an equal and valid claim on our Maker to receive all that Is necessary
for our salvation. The question is not which of these theories is
the more agreeable, but which is true. And to decide that question
one method is to ascertain which accords best with providential
facts. Does God in his providential dealings with men act on the
principles of sovereignty, distributing his favours according to the
good pleasure of his will ; or on the principle of impartial justice,
dealing with all men alike ? This question admits of but one
answer. We may make as little as we please of mere external
circumstances, and magnify as much as we can the compensations
of providence which tend to equalize the condition of men. We
may press to the extreme the principle that much shall be required
of those who receive much, and less of those who receive less.
Notwithstanding these qualifications and limitations, the fact is
patent that the greatest inequalities do exist among men ; that God
deals far more favourably with some than with others ; that He
distributes his providential blessings, which include not only tem-
voL. II. 22
838 PART m. Ch. I. — the plan OF SALVATION.
poral good but also religious adv^antages and op)3ortunities, as an
absolute sovereign according to his own good pleasure, and not as
an impartial judge. The time for judgment is not yet.
This sovereignty of God in the dispensation of his providence is
evinced in his dealings both with nations and with individuals. It
cannot be believed that the lot of the Laplanders is as favourable
as that of the inhabitants of the temperate zone ; that the Hottentots
are in as desirable a position as Europeans ; that the people of
Tartary are as well off as those of the United States. The inequality
is too glaring to be denied ; nor can it be doubted that the rule which
God adopts in determining the lot of nations is his own good pleasure,
and not the relative claims of the people affected by his providence.
The same fact is no less obvious as concerns individuals. Some
are happ}', others are miserable. Some have uninterrupted health ;
others are the victims of disease and suffering. Some have all their
faculties, others are born blind or deaf Some are rich, others sunk
in the misery and degradation of abject poverty. Some are born
in the midst of civilized society and in the bosom of virtuous families,
others are from the beginning of their being surrounded by vice and
wretchedness. These ai'e facts which cannot be denied. Nor can
it be denied that the lot of each individual is determined by the
sovereign pleasure of God.
The same principle is carried out with regard to the communica-
tion of religious knowledge and advantages. God chose the Jews
from among all the families of the earth to be the recipients of his
oracles and of the divinely instituted ordinances of religion. The
rest of the world was left for centuries in utter darkness. We may
say that it will be more tolerable In the judgment for the heathen
than for the unfaithful Jews ; and that God did not leave even the
Gentiles without a witness. All this may be admitted, and yet what
the Apostle says stands true : The advantages of the Jews were great
every way. It would be infatuation and Ingratitude for the Inhab-
itants of Christendom not to recognize their position as unspeakably
more desirable than that of Pagans. No American Christian can
persuade himself that it would have been as well had he been born
In Africa ; nor can he give any answer to the question, Why was
I born here and not there ? other than, " Even so. Father, for so
it seemed good in thy sIo;ht."
It is therefore vain to adopt a theory which does not accord with
these facts. It is vain for us to deny that God is a sovereign In the
distribution of his favours if in his providence it is undeniable
that He acts as a sovereiirn. Augustinlanism accords with these
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 339
facts of providence, and therefore must be true. It only assumes
that God acts in the dispensation of his grace precisely as He
acts in the distribution of his other favours ; and all anti-
Augustinian systems which are founded on the principle that this
sovereignty of God is inconsistent with his justice and his parental
relation to the children of men are in obvious conflict with the facts
of his providence.
Argument from the Facts of Scripture,
The third source of proof on this subject is found in the facts of
the Bible, or in the truths therein plainly revealed. Augustinian-
ism is the only system consistent with those facts or truths.
1. This appears first from the clear revelation which the Scrip-
tures make of God as infinitely exalted above all his creatures, and
as the final end as well as the source of all things. It is because
He is infinitely great and good that his glory is the end of all
things ; and his good pleasure the highest reason for whatever
comes to pass. What is man that he should contend with God ;
or presume that his interests rather than God's glory should be
made the final end ? The Scriptures not only assert the absolute
sovereignty of God, but they teach that it is founded, first, on his
infinite superiority to all creatures ; secondly, upon his relation to
the world and all it contains, as creator and preserver, and therefore
absolute proprietor ; and, thirdly, so far as we men are concerned,
upon our entire forfeiture of all claim on his mercy by our ap istasy.
The argument is that Augustinianism is the only system which
accords with the character of God and with his relation to his
creatures as revealed in the Bible.
2. It is a fact that men are a fallen race; that by their alienation
from God they are involved in a state of guilt and pollution, from
which they cannot deliver themselves. They have by their guilt
forfeited all claim on God's justice ; they might injustice be left to
perish ; and by their depravity they have I'endered themselves
unable to turn unto God, or to do anything spiritually good. These
are facts already })roved. The sense of guilt is vaniversal and
indestructible. All sinners know the righteous judgment of God,
that they are worthy of death. The inability, of siiuiers is not only
clearly and repeatedly asserted in the Scriptures, but is proved by
all experience, by the common consciousness of men, and, of course,
by the consciousness of every individual man, and especially of
every man who has ever been or who is truly convinced of sin.
But if men are thus unable to change their own hearts, to prepare
L
340 PART m. Ch. l — the plan of salvation.
themselves for that change, or to cooperate in its production, then
all those systems which assume the ability of the sinner and rest
the distinction between one man and another as to their being saved
or lost, upon the use made of that ability, must be false. Tiiey are
contrary to facts. They are inconsistent with what every man, in
the depth of his own heart, knows to be true. The point intended
to be illustrated when the Scriptures compare sinners to men dead,
and even to dry bones, is their entire helplessness. In this respect
they are all alike. Should Christ pass through a graveyard, and
bid one here and another there to come forth, the reason why one
was restored to life and another left in his grave could be sought
only in his good pleasure. From the nature of the case it could
not be found in the dead themselves. Therefore if the Scriptures,
observation, and consciousness teach that men are unable to restore
themselves to spiritual life, their being quickened must be referred
to the good pleasure of God.
From the Work of the Spirit.
3. This is confirmed by another obvious fact or truth of Scrip-
ture. The reo-eneration of the human heart ; the conversion of a
sinner to God is the work, not of the subject of that change, but of
the Spirit of God. This is plain, first, because the Bible always
attributes it to the Holy Ghost. We are said to be born, not of the
will of man, but of God ; to be born of the Spirit ; to be the subjects
of the renewing of the Holy Ghost; to be quickened, or raised from
the dead by the Spirit of the Lord ; the dry bones live only when
the Spirit blows upon them. Such is the representation which
pervades the Scriptures from beginning to end. Secondly, the
Church, therefore, in her collective capacity, and every living
member of that Church recognizes this truth in their prayers for
the renewing power of the Holy Ghost. In the most ancient and
universally recognized ci*eeds of the Cliurch the Spirit is designated
as TO tfaoTTOLov, the life-giving ; the author of all spiritual life. The
sovereignty involved in this regenerating influence of the Holy
Spirit is necessarily implied in the nature of the power exerted. It
is declared to be the mighty power of God ; the exceeding great-
ness of his power ; the power which wrought in Christ wiien it
raised Him from the dead. It is represented as analogous to the
power by which the blind were made to see, the deaf to hear, and
lepers were cleansed. It is very true the Spirit illuminates, teaches,
convinces, persuades, and, in a word, governs the soul according to
its nature as a rational creature. But all this relates to what is
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 341
done in the case of the children of God after their regeneration.
Imparting spiritual life is one thing ; sustaining, controlling, and
cherishing that life is another. If the Bible teaches that regenera-
tion, or spiritual resurrection, is the woi'k of the almighty power of
God, analogous to that which was exercised by Christ when He
said, " I will, be thou clean ; " then it of necessity follows that
regeneration is an act of sovereignty. It dejiends on God the
giver of life and not on those spiritually dead, who are to live, and
who are to remain in their sins. The intimate conviction of the
people of God in all ages has been and is that regeneration, or the
infusion of spiritual life, is an act of God's power exercised accord-
ing to his good pleasure, and therefore it is the gift for which the
Church specially prays. But this fact involves the truth of
Augustinianism, which simply teaches that the reason why one
man is regenerated and another not, and consequently one saved
and another not, is the good pleasure of God. He has mercy upon
whom He will have mercy. It is true that He commands all men
to seek his grace, and promises that those who seek shall find. But
why does one seek and another not ? Why is one impressed with
the importance of salvation while others remain indifferent ? If it
be true that not only regeneration, but all right thoughts and just
purposes come from God, it is of Him, and not of us, that we seek
and find his favour.
Election is to Holiness.
4. Another plainly revealed fact is, that we are chosen to holi-
ness ; that we are created unto good works ; in other words, that
all good in us is the fruit, and, therefore, cannot by possibility be
the ground of election. In Ejth. i. 3—6, the Apostle says: "Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according
as He hath chosen us in Him, before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love :
having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the
praise of the glory of his grace, wherein He hath made us accepted
in the Beloved." In this passage the Augustinian doctrine of
election is stated as clearly and as comprehensively as it has
ever been presented in human language. The Apostle teaches,
(1.) That the end or design of the whole scheme of redemption is
the praise of the glory of the grace of God, i. e., to exhibit to the
admiration of intellio;ent creatures the glorious attribute of divine
342 PART III. Ch. I.— the plan OF SALVATION.
grace, or the love of an infinitely holy and just God towards guilty
and polhited sinners. (2.) To tliis end, of his mere good pleasure,
He predestinated those who were the objects of this love to the
high dignity of being the children of God. (3.) That, to prepare
them for this exalted state, He chose them, before the foundation
of the world, to be holy and without blame in love. (4.) That in
consequence of his choice, or in execution of this purpose, He
confers upon them all spiritual blessings, regeneration, faith, repent-
ance, and the indwelling of the Spii'it. It is utterly incompatible
with this fact that the foresight of faith and repentance should be
the ground of election. Men, according to the Apostle, repent and
believe, because they are el'ected ; God has chosen them to be
holy, and therefore their holiness or their goodness in any form or
measure cannot be the reason why He chose them. In like manner
the Apostle Peter says, believers are elect " unto obedience and
sprinkhng of the blood of Jesus Christ." (1 Pet. i. 2.) Such is
the clear doctrine of the Bible, men are chosen to be holy. The
fact that God has predestinated them to salvation is the reason why
they are brought to repentance and a holy life, " God," says Paul
to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. ii. 13), "hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvatif)n through (not on account of) sanctiHcation
of the Si)irit and belief of the truth." " We give thanks to God
always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers ; remem-
bering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and
patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and
our Father; knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God."
(1 Thess. i. 2—4.) He recognizes their election as the source of
their faith and love.
Fi'om the Gratuitous Nature of Salvation.
5. Another decisive fact is that salvation is of grace. The two
ideas of grace and works ; of gift and debt ; of undeserved ftivour
and what is merited ; of what is to be referred to the good pleasure
of the giver, and what to the character or state of the receiver,
are antithetical. The one excludes the other.. " If by grace, then
is it no more of works : otherwise grace is no more grace. But if
it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more
work." Rom. xi. 6. Nothing concerning the plan of salvation is
more plainly revealed, or more strenuously insisted upon than its
gratuitousness, from beginning to end. " Ye are saved by grace,"
is engraved upon almost every page of the Bible, and in the hearts
of all believers. (1.) It was a matter of grace that a plan of salva-
)
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 343
tion was devised for fallen man and not for fallen angels. (2.) It
was a matter of grace that that plan was revealed to some portions
of our race and not to otiiers. (3.) The acceptance, or justifica-
tion of every individual heir of salvation is a matter of grace.
(4.) The work of sanctification is a work of grace, i. e., a work
carried on by the unmerited, supernatural power of the Holy
Spirit. (5.) It is a matter of grace that of those who hear the
gospel some accept the offered mercy, while others reject it. All
these points are so clearly taught in the Bible that they are practi-
cally acknowledged by all Christians. Although denied to satisfy
the understanding, they are concealed by the heart, as is evident
from the prayers and praises of the Church in all ages and in all
its divisions. That the vocation or regeneration of the believer is
of grace, ^'. e., that the fact of his vocation is to be referred to God,
and not to anything in himself is specially insisted upon by the
Apostle Paul in almost all his epistles. For example, in 1 Cor. i.
17—31. It had been objected to him that he did not preach " with
the wisdom of words." He vindicated himself by showing, first,
that the wisdom of men had not availed to secure the saving knowl-
edge of God ; and secondly, that when the gospel of salvation was
revealed, it was not the wise who accepted it. In proof of this
latter point, he appealed to their own experience. He referred to
the fact that of their number God had not chosen the wise, the
great, or the noble ; but the foolish, the weak, and the despised.
God had done this. It was He who decided who should be brought
to accept the Gospel, and who should be left to themselves. He
had a purpose in this, and that purpose was that those who glory
should glory in the Lord, {. e., that no man should be able to refer
his salvation (the fact that he was saved while another was not
saved) to himself. For, adds the Apostle, it is of Him that we
are in Christ Jesus, Our union with Christ, the fact that we are
believers, is to be referred to Him, and not to ourselves.
The Apostle's Argument in Romans ix.
This also is the purpose of the Apostle in the whole of the ninth
chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. He had asserted, agreeably
to the predictions of the ancient prophets, that the Jews as a nation
were to be cast off, and the blessings of the true religion were to
be extended to the Gentiles. To establish this point, he first shows
that God was not bound by his promise to Abraham to save all the
natural descendants of that patriarch. On the contrary, that it
was a pi'erogative which God, as sovereign, claimed and exercised,
344 PART lU. Ch. L — the plan OF SALVATION.
to have mercy on whom He would, and to reject whom He would.
He chose Isaac and not Ishmael, Jacob and not Esau, and, in tliat
case, to show that the choice was perfectly sovereign, it was an-
nounced before the birth of the children, before they had done good
or evil. Pharaoh He had hardened. He left him to himself to be
a monument of justice. This right, which God both claims and
exercises, to choose whom He will to be the recipients of his mercy,
involves, the Apostle teaches us, no injustice. It is a right of
sovereignty which belongs to God as Creator and as moral Gov-
ernor. No one had a right to complain if, for the manifestation of
his mercy, he saved some of the guilty family of men; and to show
his justice, allowed others to bear the just recompense of their sins.
On these principles God, as Paul tells us, dealt with the Jews.
The nation as a nation was cast oflP, but a remnant was saved.
And this remnant was an " election of grace," i. e., men chosen
gratuitously. Paul himself was an illustration of this election, and
a proof of its entirely gratuitous nature. He was a persecutor and
a blasphemer, and while in the very exercise of his malignant op-
position, was suddenly and miraculously converted. Here, if in no
other case, the election was of grace. There was nothing in Paul
to distinguish him favourably from other unbelieving Pharisees.
It could not be the foresight of his faith and repentance which was
the ground of his election, because he was brought to faith and
repentance by the sovereign and irresistible intervention of God.
What, however, was true of Paul is true of every other believer.
Every man who is brought to Christ is so brought that it is re-
vealed to his own consciousness, and openly confessed by the
mouth, that his conversion is of God and not of himself; that he
is a monument of the election of grace ; that he, at least, was not
chosen because of his deserts.
Argument from Experience.
The whole history of the Church, and the daily observation of
Christians, prove the sovereignty of God in the dispensation of
saving blessings, for which Augustinians contend. It is true, in-
deed, first, that God is a covenant keeping God, and that his
promise is to his people and to their seed after them to the third
and fourth generations. It is, therefore, true that his grace is dis-
pensed, although not exclusively, yet conspicuously, in the line of
tlieir descendants. Secondly, it is also true that God has prom-
ised his blessing to attend faithful instruction. He commands par-
ents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of
§8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 345
the Lord ; and promises that if thus trained in the way in which
they should go, when they are okl they will not depart from it. But
it is not true that regeneration is the product of culture. Men can-
not be educated into Christians, as they may be trained in knowl-
edge or morals. Conversion is not the result of the development
of a germ of spiritual life communicated in baptism or derived by
descent from pious parents. Everything is in the hands of God.
As Christ when on earth healed one and another by a word, so now
by his Spirit, He quickens whom He will. This fact is proved by
all history. Some periods of the Church have been remarkable
for these displays of his powers, while others have passed with only
here and there a manifestation of his saving grace. Tn the Apos-
tolic age thousands were converted ; many were daily added to the
Church of such as were to be saved. Then in the Augustinian
age there was a wide diffusion of the savino; influences of the
Spirit. Still more conspicuously was this the case at the Reforma-
tion. After a lono; decline in Great Britain came the wonderful
revival of true religion under Wesley and Whitefield. Contempo-
raneously the great awakening occurred throughout this country.
And thus from time to time, and in all parts of the Church, we see
these evidences of the special and sovereign interventions of God.
The sovereignty of these dispensations is just as manifest as that
displayed in the seven years of plenty and the seven years of dearth
in the time of Moses. Every pastor, almost every parent, can bear
witness to the same truth. They pray and labour long apparently
without success; and then, often when they look not for it, comes
the outpouring of the Spirit. Changes are effected in the state
and character of men, which no man can produce in another ; and
which no man can effect in himself; chano-es which must be
referred to the immediate agency of the Spirit of God. These are
facts. They cannot be reasonably denied. They cannot be ex-
plained away. Tiiey demonstrate that God acts as a sovereign in
the distribution of his grace. With this fact no other scheme than
the Augustinian can be reconciled. If salvation is of grace, as the
Scriptures so clearly teach, then it is not of works whether actual
or foreseen.
Express Declarations of Scripture.
6. The Scriptures clearly assert that God has mercy on whom
He will have mercy, and compassion on him on whom He will
have compassion. They teach negatively, that election to sal-
vation is not of works ; that it does not depend on the character
or efforts of its objects ; and affirmatively, that it does depend on
346 PART III. Ch. I. — THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
God. It is referred to his good pleasure. It is declared to be of
Him ; to be of o-race. Passaoes in which these negative and affirm-
ative statements are made, have already been quoted. In Rom. ix.
it is said that election is " not of woi'ks, but of Him that calleth."
" So then, it is not of him that vvilleth, nor of him that runneth,
but of God that sheweth mercy." As in the time of Elias amid the
general apostasy, God said, " I have left me seven thousand in
Israel, all the knees which have not bowed the knee unto Baal."
(1 Kings, xix. 18.) "So then," says the Apostle, "there is a rem-
nant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then is
it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace." (Rom.
xi. 5, 6.) So in Rom. viii. 30, it is said, "Whom He did predesti-
nate, them He also called," i. e., He regenerated and sanctified.
Regeneration follows predestination to life, and is the gift of God.
Paul said of himself, " It pleased God, who separated me from my
mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in
me." (Gal. i. 15, 16.) To the Ephesians he says that those obtain
the inheritance, who were " predestinated according to the purpose
of Him who w'orketh all things after the counsel of his own will."
(Eph. i. 12.) In 2 Tim. i. 9, he says, we are saved " according to
his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began." The Apostle James, i. 18, says, " Of
his own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be
a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." The Apostle Peter speaks
of those who " stumble at the word, being disobedient : whereunto
also they were appointed." (1 Pet. ii. 8.) And Jude speaks of
certain men who had " crept in unawares, who were before of old
ordained to this condemnation." (Jude 4.) This foreordination to
condemnation is indeed a judicial act, as is taught in Rom. ix. 22.
God condemns no man, and foreordains no man tio condemnation,
except on account of his sin. But the preterition of such men,
leaving them, rather than others equally guilty, to suffer the pen-
alty of their sins, is distinctly declared to be a sovereign act.
The Words of Jesus.
Of all the teachers sent by God to reveal his will, no one more
frequently asserts the divine sovereignty than our blessed Lord
himself. He speaks of those whom the Father had " given Him."
(John xvii. 2.) To these He gives eternal life. (John xvii. 2,
24.) For these He prays ; for them He sanctified Himself.
(John xvii. 19.) Of them He says, it is the Father's will that He
should lose none, but raise them up at the last day. (John vi. 39.)
k
§ 8.] THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 347
They are, therefore, perfectly safe. " My sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal
life ; they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all ;
and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand."
(John X. 27-29.) As the sheep of Christ are chosen out of the
world, and given to Him, God is the chooser. They do not choose
Him, but He chooses them. No one can be added to their num-
ber, and that number shall certainly be completed. " Ail that
the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out." (John vi. 37.) " No man can
come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him : and
I will raise him up at the last day." (John vi. 44.) " Every man
therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh unto
me." (Verse 45.) " No man can come unto me, except it were
given unto him of my Father." (Verse 65.) With God it rests
who shall be brought to the saving knowledge of the truth. " It
is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,
but to them it is not given." (Matt. xiii. 11.) " I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
babes." (Matt. xi. 25.) In Acts xiii. 48, it is said, "As many
as were ordained to eternal life believed." The Scriptures, there-
fore, say that repentance, faith, and the renewing of the Holy
Ghost are gifts of God. Christ was exalted at the right hand of
God to give repentance and remission of sins. But if faith and
repentance are the gifts of God they must be the fruits of election.
They cannot possibly be its ground.
If the office of the theologian, as is so generally admitted, be
to take the facts of Scripture as the man of science does those of
nature, and found upon them his doctrines, instead of deducing his
doctrines from the principles or primary truths of his phiIosoj)hy, it
seems impossible to resist the conclusion that the doctrine of
Auo;ustine is the doctrine of the Bible. According to that doctrine
God is an absolute sovereign. He does what seems good in his
sight. He sends the truth to one nation and not to another. He
gives that truth saving power in one mind and not in another. It
is of Him, and not of us, that any man is in Chi'ist Jesus, and is
an heir of eternal hfe.
This, as has been shown, is asserted in express terms, with great
frequency and clearness in the Scriptures. It is sustained by all
the facts of providence and of revelation. It attributes to God
348 PART m. Cii. I. — THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
nothing but wliat is proved, by his actual government of the world,
to be his rightful prerogative. It only teaches that God purposes
what, with our own eyes, we see He actually does, and ever has
done, in the dispensatious of his providence. The consistent
opponent of this doctrine must, therefore, reject the truths even of
natural rehVion. As Aun;ustlnianism agrees with the facts of prov-
idence it of course agrees with the facts of Scripture. The Bible
declares that the salvation of sinful men is a matter of grace ; and
that the great design of the whole scheme of redemption is to dis-
play the glory of that divine attribute, — to exhibit to the admiration,
and for the edification of the intelligent universe, God's unmerited
love and boundless beneficence to guilty and polluted creatures.
Accordingly, men are represented as being sunk into a state of sin
and miserv ; from this state they cannot deliver themselves ; for
their redemption God sent his own eternal Son to assume their
nature, obey, and suffer in their place ; and his Holy Spirit to
apply the redemption purchased by the Son. To introduce the
element of merit into any part of this scheme vitiates its nature
and frustrates its design. Uidess our salvation from beginning to
end be of grace it is not an exhibition of grace. The Bible,
however, teaches that it was a matter of grace that salvation was
provided ; that it was revealed to one nation and not to another ;
and that it was applied to one person and not to another. It teaches
that all goodness in man is due to the influence of the Holy Spirit,
and that all spiritual blessings are the fruits of election ; that we
are chosen to holiness, and created unto good works, because pre-
destinated to be the children of God. With these facts of Scripture
the experience of Christians agrees. It is the intimate conviction
of every believer, founded upon the testimony of his own conscious-
ness, as well as upon the Scriptures, that his salvation is of God ;
that it is of Him, and not of himself, that he has been brought to
the exercise of faith and repentance. So long as he looks within
the believer is satisfied of the truth of these doctrines. It is only
when he looks outward, and attempts to reconcile these truths with
the dictates of his own understanding that he becomes confused
and sceptical. But as our faith is not founded on the wisdom of
men, but on the power of God, as the foolishness of God is wiser
than men, the part of wisdom, as well as the path of duty and safety,
is to receive as true what God has revealed, whether we can
comprehend his ways unto perfection or not.
I
§ 9.] OBJECTIONS TO THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 349
§ 9. Objections to the Augustinian Scheme.
That there are formidable objections to the Augustinian doctrine
of divine sovereignty cannot be denied. They address themselves
even more powerfully to the feelings and to the imagination than
they do to the understanding. They are therefore often arrayed in
such distorted and exaggerated forms as to produce the strongest
revulsion and abhorrence. This, however, is due partly to the dis-
tortion of the truth and^ partly to the opposition of our imperfectly
or utterly unsanctified nature, to the things of the Spirit, of which
the Apostle speaks in 1 Cor. ii. 14.
Of these objections, however, it may be remarked in general, in
the first place, that they do not bear exclusively on this doctrine.
It is one of the unfair devices of controversy to represent difficulties
which press with equal force against some admitted doctrine as
valid only against the doctrine which the objector rejects. Thus
the objections against Augustinianism, on which special reliance is
placed, bear with their full force against the decrees of God in
general ; or if these be denied, against the divine foreknowledge ;
against the permission of sin and misery, and especially against the
doctrine of the unending sinfulness and misery of many of God's
intelligent creatures. These are doctrines which all Christians ad-
mit, and which are arrayed by infidels and atheists in colours as
shocking to the imagination and feelings as any which Anti-Augus-
tinians have employed in depicting the sovereignty of God. It is
just as difficult to reconcile to our natural ideas of God that He,
with absolute control over all creatures, should allow so many of
them to perish eternally as that He should save some and not others.
The difficulty is in both cases the same. God does not pi-event the
perdition of those whom, beyond doubt, He has power to save. If
those who admit God's providence say that He has wise reasons
for permitting so many of our race to perish, the advocates of his
sovereignty say that He has adequate reasons for saving some and
not others. It is unreasonable and unjust, therefore, to press diffi-
culties which bear against admitted truths as fatal to doctrines
which are matters of controversy. When an objection is shown to
prove too much it is rationally refuted.
The sayne Objections bear agaiyist the Providence of Crod.
A second general remark respecting these objections is, that they
bear against the providence of God. This has already been shown.
It is useless and irrational to argue against facts. It can avail
350 PART III. Ch. I. — the plan OF SALVATION.
notliing to say that it is unjust in God to deal more favourably witli
one nation than with another, with one individual than with another,
if in point of fact He acts as a sovereign in the distribution of his
favours. That He does so act is undeniable so far as providential
blessings and religious advantages are concerned. And this is all
that Augustinianism asserts in regard to the dispensations of his
grace. If, therefore, the principle on which these objections are
founded is proved to be false by the actual facts of providence the
objections cannot be valid against the Augustinian scheme.
Founded on our Ignorance.
A third obvious remark is that these objections are subjective ;
i. e., they derive all their force from the limitation of our powers
and from the narrowness of our views. They assume that we are
competent to sit in judgment on God's government of the universe;
that we can ascertain the end which He has in view, and estimate
aright the wisdom and justice of the means adopted for its
accomplishment. This is clearly a preposterous assumption, not
only because of our utter incapacity to comprehend the ways of
God, but also because we must of necessity judge before the con-
summation of his plan, and must also judge from appearances. It
is but right in judging of the plans even of a fellow mortal, that
we should wait until they are fully developed, and also right that
we should not judge without being certain that we can see his real
intentions, and the connection between his means and end.
Besides all this, it is to be observed that these difficulties arise
from our contemplating, so to speak, only one aspect of the case.
We look onlv on the sovereignty of God and the absolute nature
of his control over his creatures. We leave out of view, or are
incapable of understanding the perfect consistency of that sove-
reignty and control, with the free agency and responsibility of his
rational creatures. It is perfectly true, in one aspect, tliat God
determines according to his own good pleasure the destiny of every
human being ; and it is equally true, in another aspect, that every
man detertnines his own destiny. These truths can both be estab-
lished on the firmest grounds." Their consistency, therefore, must
be admitted as a fact, even though we may not be able to discover
it. Of the multitudes who start in the pursuit of fame, wealth, or
power, sotne succeed while others fail. Success and failure, in
every case, are determined by the Lord. This is distinctly asserted
in the Bible. " God," saith the Psalmist, " putteth down one and
setteth up another." (Ps. Ixxv. 7.) " The Lord maketh poor, and
§9.] OBJECTIONS TO THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 351
maketh rich : He bringeth low, and lifteth up." (1 Sam. ii. 7.}
" The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the
name of the Lord." (Job i. 21.) " It is He that giveth thee
power to get wealth." (Dent. viii. 18.) " He giveth wisdom unto
the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding." (Dan.
ii. 2L) " The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giv-
eth it to whomsoever He will." (Dan. iv. 17.) This is a truth
of natural religion. All men, whether Christians or not, pray for
the success of their enterprises. They recognize the providential
control of God over all the affairs of men. Nevertheless they are
fully aware of the consistency of this control with their own free
agency and responsibility. Every man who makes the acquisition
of wealth his object in life, is conscious that he does it of his own
free choice. He lays his own planfc ; adopts his own means ; and
acts as freely, and as entirely according to the dictates of his own
will, as though there were no such thing as providence. This is
not a delusion. He is perfectly free. His character expresses itself
in the choice which he makes of the end which he desires to secure.
He cannot help recognizing his responsibility for that choice, and
for all the means which he adopts to carry it into effect. All this
is true in the sphere of religion. God places life and death before
every man who hears the gospel. He warns him of the conse-
quences of a wrong choice. He presents and urges all the consid-
erations which should lead to a rio-ht determination. He assures
the sinner that if he forsakes his sin, and returns unto the Lord, he
shall be pardoned and accepted. He promises that if he asks, he
shall receive ; if he seeks he shall find. He assures him that He
is more willing to give the Holy Spirit, than parents are to give
bread unto their children. If, notwithstanding all this, he delib-
erately prefers the world, refuses to seek the salvation of his soul
in the appointed way, and finally perishes, he is as completely
responsible for his character and conduct, and for the perdition of
his soul, as the man of the world is responsible for the pursuit of
wealth. In both cases, and equally in both cases, the sovereign
disjmsition of God is consistent with the freedom and responsibility
of the agents. It is, therefore, by looking at only one half of the
whole truth, that the difficulties in question are magnified into such
importance. Men act as freely in religion as they do in any
department of life ; and when they perish it is the work of their
own hands.
352 PART ni. ch. l — the plan of salvation.
These Objections were urged against the Teachings of the Apostles.
Another remark respecting these objections should not be over-
looked. They were urged by the Jews against the doctrine of the
Apostle. This at least proves that his doctrine is our doctrine.
Had he not taught what all Augustinians hold to be true, there
would have been no room for such objections. Had he denied that
God dispenses salvation according to his own good pleasure, having
mercy on whom He will have mercy, why should the Jews urge
that God was unjust and that the responsibility of man was de-
stroyed? What appearaiice of injustice could there have been had
Paul taught that God elects those whom He foresees will repent
and believe, and because of that foresight? It is only because
he clearly asserts the sovereignly of God that the objections have
any place. The answers which Paul gives to these difficulties
should satisfy us for two reasons ; first, because they are the an-
swers dictated by the Spirit of God ; and secondly, because they
are in themselves satisfactory to every rightly constituted mind.
The first of these objections is that it is inconsistent with the
justice of God to save one and not another, according to his own
good pleasure. To this Paul answers, (1.) That God claims this
prerogative. (2.) That He actually exercises it. It is useless to
deny facts, or to say that what God really does is inconsistent with
his nature. (3.) That it is a rightful prerogative, founded not only
on the infinite superiority of God and in his proprietorship in all his
creatures ; but also in his relation as moral governor to the race of
sinful men. If even a human sovereign is entitled to exercise his
discretion in pardoning one criminal and not another, surely this
prerogative cannot reasonably be denied to God. There can be
no injustice in allowing the sentence of a just law to be executed
upon an offender. And this is all that God does in regard to sin-
ners.
The further difficulty connected with this subject arising from
the foreordination of sin, belongs to the subject of decrees, and has
already been considered. The same remark applies to the objec-
tion that the doctrine in question destroys all motive to exertion
and to the use of means of grace ; and reduces the doctrine of the
Scriptures to a purely fatalistic system.
The practical tendency of any doctrine is to be decided from its
nature, and from its effects. The natural effect of the conviction
that we have forfeited all claims on God's justice, that we are at
his mercy, and that He may rightfully leave us to perish in our sins,
§9.] OBJECTIONS TO THE AUGUSTINIAN SCHEME. 353
is to lead us to seek that mercy with earnestness and importunity.
And the experience of the Church in all ages proves that such is
the actual effect of the doctrine in question. It has not led to
neglect, to stolid unconcern, or to rebellious opposition to God, but
to submission, to the acknowledgment of the truth, and to sure
trust in Christ as the appointed Saviour of those who deserve to
perish.
VOL. n. 23
CHAPTER II.
THE COVENANT OF GRACE.
§ 1. The Plan of Salvation is a Covenant.
The plan of salvation is presented under the form of a covenant.
This is evident, —
First, from the constant use of the words n"^"!? and hiaOrjKiq in
reference to it. With regard to the former of these words, al-
though it is sometimes used for a law, disposition, or arrangement
in general, where the elements of a covenant strictly speaking are
absent, yet there can be no doubt that according to its prevailing
usage in tlie Old Testament, it means a mutual contract between
two or more parties. It is very often used of compacts between
individuals, and especially between kings and rulers. Abraham and
Abimelech made a covenant. (Gen. xxi. 27.) Joshua made a cov-
enant with the people. (Josh. xxiv. 25.) Jonathan and David
made a covenant. (1 Sam. xviii. 8.) Jonathan made a covenant
with the house of David. (1 Sam. xx. 16.) Ahab made a cov-
enant with Benhadad. (1 Kings xx. 34.) So we find it constantly.
There is therefore no room to doubt that the word n"*!!! when used
of transactions between man and man means a mutual compact.
We have no right to give it any other sense when used of trans-
actions between God and man. Repeated mention is made of the
covenant of God with Abraham, as in Gen. xv. 18 ; xvii. 13, and
afterwards with Isaac and Jacob. Then with the Israelites at
Mount Sinai. The Old Testament is founded on this idea of a
covenant relation between God and the theocratic people.
The meaning of the word hiaOrjKrj in the Greek Scriptures is just
as certain and uniform. It is derived from the verb StaTt^T^/ii, to
arrange^ and, therefore, in ordinary Greek is used for any arrange-
ment, or disposition. In the Scriptures it is almost uniformly used
in the sense of a covenant. In the Septuagint it is the translation
of n"^"^? in all the cases above referred to. It is the term always
used in the New Testament to designate the covenant with Abra-
ham, with the Israelites, and witli believers. The old covenant
and the new are presented in contrast. Both were covenants. If
i
§2.] DIFFERENT VIEWS OF THE COVENANT. 355
the word has this meaning when applied to the transaction with
Abraham and with the Hebrews, it must have the same meaning
when appHed to the plan of salvation revealed in the gospel.
Secondly, that the plan of salvation is presented in the Bible
under the form of a covenant is proved not only from the signifi-
cation and usage of the words above mentioned, but also and more
decisively from the fact that the elements of a covenant are in-
cluded in this plan. There are parties, mutual promises or stipu-
lations, and conditions. So that it is in fact a covenant, whatever
it may be called. As this is the Scriptural mode of representation,
it is of great importance that it should be retained in theology.
Our only security for retaining the truths of the Bible, is to adhere
to the Scriptures as closely as possible in our mode of presenting
the doctrines therein revealed.
§ 2. Different Views of the Nature of this Covenant.
It is assumed by many that the parties to the covenant of grace
are God and fallen man. Man by his apostasy having forfeited
the favour of God, lost the divine image, and involved himself in
sin and misery, must have perished in this state, had not God pro-
vided a plan of salvation. Moved by compassion for his fallen
creatures, God determined to send his Son into the world, to assume
their nature, and to do and suffer whatever was requisite for their
salvation. On the ground of this redeeming work of Christ, God
promises salvation to all who will comply with the terms on which
it is offered. This general statement embraces forms of opinion
which differ very much one from the others.
1. It includes even the Pelagian view of the plan of salvation,
which assumes that there is no difference between the coA^enant of
works under which Adam was placed, and the covenant of grace,
under which men are now, except as to the extent of the obedi-
ence required. God promised life to Adam on the condition of
perfect obedience, because he was in a condition to render such
obedience. He promises salvation to men now on the condition of
such obedience as they are able to render, whether Jews, Pagans,
or Christians. According to this view the parties to the covenant
are God and man ; the promise is life ; the condition is obedience,
such as man in the use of his natural powers is able to render.
2. The Remonstrant system does not differ essentially from the
Pelagian, so far as the parties, the promise and the condition of the
covenant are concerned. The Remonstrants also make God and
man the parties, life the promise, and obedience the condition.
356 PART in. Ch. il — the covenant of grace.
But tliey regard fallen men as in a state of sin by nature, as need-
ing supernatural gi'ace which is furnished to all, and the obedience
required is the obedience of faith, or fides obsequiosa, faith as in-
cluding and securing evangelical obedience. Salvation under the
gospel is as truly by Morks as under the law ; but the obedience
required is not the perfect righteousness demanded of Adam, but
such as fallen man, by the aid of the Spirit, is now able to perform.
3. Wesleyan Arminianism greatly exalts the work of Christ, the
importance of the Spirit's influence, and the grace of the gospel
above the standard adopted by the Remonstrants. The two systems,
however, are essentially the same. The work of Christ has equal
reference to all men. It secures for all the promise of salvation on
the condition of evangelical obedience ; and it obtains for all, Jews
and Gentiles, enough measures of divine grace to render such
obedience practicable. The salvation of each individual man
depends on the use which he makes of this sufficient grace.
4. The Lutherans also hold that God had the serious purpose to
save all men ; that Christ died equally for all ; that salvation is
offered to all who hear the gospel^ on the condition, not of works or
of evangelical obedience, but of faith alone ; faith, however, is the
gift of God ; men have not the power to believe, but they have the
power of effectual resistance ; and those, and those only, under
the gospel, who wilfully resist, perish, and for that reason.
According to all these views, which were more fully stated in the
preceding chapter, the covenant of grace is a compact between
God and fallen man, in which God promises salvation on condition
of a compliance with the demands of the gospel. What those
demands are, as we have seen, is differently explained.
The essential distinctions between the above-mentioned views of
the plan of salvation, or covenant of grace, and the Augustinian
system, are, (1.) That, according to the former, its provisions have
equal reference to all mankind, whereas according to the latter they
have special reference to that portion of our race who are actually
saved ; and (2.) That Augustinianism says that it is God and not
man who determines who are to be saved. As has been already
frequently remarked, the question which of these systems is true is
not to be decided by ascertaining which is the more agreeable to
our feelings or the more plausible to our understanding, but which
is consistent with the doctrines of the Bible and the facts of experi-
ence. This point has already been discussed. Our present object
is simply to state what Augustinians mean by the covenant of
grace.
§ 3.] PARTIES TO THE COVENANT. 357
The word grace is used in Scripture and in ordinary religious
writings in three senses. (1.) For unmerited love ; i. e., love
exercised towards the undeserving. (2.) For any unmerited
favour, especially for spiritual blessings. Hence, all the fruits of
the Spirit in believers are called graces, or unmerited gifts of God.
(3.) The word grace often means the supernatural influence of the
Holy Ghost. This is preeminently grace, being the great gift
secured by the work of Christ, and without which his redemption
would not avail to our salvation. In all these senses of the word
the plan of salvation is properly called a covenant of grace. It is
of grace because it originated in the mysterious love of God for
sinners who deserved only his wrath and curse. Secondly, because
it promises salvation, not on the condition of works or anything
meritorious on our part, but as an unmerited gift. And, thirdly,
because its benefits are secured and applied not in the course of
nature, or in the exercise of the natural powers of the sinner, but
by the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit, granted to him as
an unmerited gift.
§ 3. Parties to the Covenant.
At first view there appears to be some confusion in the state-
ments of the Scriptures as to the parties to this covenant. Some-
times Christ is presented as one of the parties ; at others He is
represented not as a party, but as the mediator and surety of the
covenant ; while the parties are represented to be God and his
people. As the old covenant was made between God and the
Hebrews, and Moses acted as mediator, so the new covenant is
commonly represented in the Bible as formed between God and
his people, Christ acting as mediator. He is, therefore, called the
mediator of a better covenant founded on better promises.
Some theologians propose to reconcile these modes of representa-
tion by saying that as the covenant of works was formed with Adam
as the representative of his race, and therefore in him with all
mankind descending from him by ordinary generation ; so the
covenant of grace was formed with Christ as the head and repre-
sentative of his people, and in Him with all those given to Him by
tlie Father. This simplifies the matter, and agrees with the parallel
which the Apostle traces between Adam and Christ in Rom. v.
12-21, and 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 47-49. Still it does not remove the
incongruity of Christ's being represented as at once a party and a
mediator of the same covenant. There are in fact two covenants
relating to the salvation of fallen man, the one between God and
358 PART m. ch. il— the covenant of grace.
Christ, the other between God and his people. These covenants
differ not only in their parties, but also in their promises and
conditions. Both are so clearly presented in the Bible that they
should not be confounded. The latter, the covenant of grace, is
founded on the former, the covenant of redemption. Of the one
Christ is the mediator and surety ; of the other He is one of the
contracting parties.
This is a matter which concerns only perspicuity of statement.
There is no doctrinal difference between those who prefer the one
statement and those who prefer the other ; between those who
comprise all the facts of Scripture relating to the subject under one
covenant between God and Christ as the representative of his
people, and those who distribute them under two. The Westmin-
ster standards seem to adopt sometimes the one and sometimes
the other mode of representation. In the Confession of Faitli ^ it is
said, " Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by
that covenant [i. e., by the covenant of works], the Lord was
pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace ;
wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus
Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved,
and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life, his
Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." Here the
implication is that God and his people are the parties ; for in a
covenant the promises are made to one of the parties, and here it
is said that life and salvation are promised to sinners, and that faith
is demanded of them. The same view is presented in the Shorter
Catechism, according to the natural interpretation of the answer to
the twentieth question. It is there said, " God having out of his
mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting
life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the
estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation
by a Redeemer." In the Larger Catechism, however, the other
view is expressly adopted. In the answer to the question,^ "With
whom was the covenant of grace made ? " it is said, " The covenant
of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in Him
with all the elect as his seed."
Two Covenants to he Distinguished.
This conftision is avoided by distinguishing between the covenant
of redemption between the Father and the Son, and the covenant
of grace between God and his people. The latter supposes the
1 Chap. vii. § 3. '^ Ques. 31.
I
§4.] COVENANT OF REDEMPTION. 359
former, and is founded upon it. Tlie two, however, ought not to
be confounded, as both are clearly revealed in Scripture, and
moreover thej' differ as to the parties, as to the promises, and as to
the conditions. On tliis subject Turrettin says,^ " Atque hie su-
perfluum videtur quserere. An foedus hoc contractum fuerit cum
Chrlsto, tanquam altera parte contrahente, et in ipso cum toto ejus
semlne, ut primum foedus cum Adamo pactum fuerat, et in Adamo
cum tota ejus poteritate : quod non paucis placet, quia proniissiones
ipsi dicuntur factae. Gal. iii. 16, et quia, ut Caput et Princeps pop-
uli sui, in omnibus primas tenet, ut nihil nisi in ipso et ab ipso
obtineri possit : An vero foedus contractum sit in Christo cum toto
semine, ut non tarn habeat rationem partis contrahentis, quam
partis mediae, quae inter dissidentes stat ad eos reconciliandos, ut
aliis satius videtur. Superfluum, inquam, est de eo disceptare, quia
res eodem redit; et certum est duplex h'lc pactum necessario
attendendum esse, vel unius ejusdem pacti duas partes et gradus.
Prius pactum est, quod inter Patrem et Filium intercedit, ad opus
redemptionis exequendum. Posterius est, quod Deus cum electis
in Christo contrahit, de illis per et propter Christum salvandis sub
conditione fidei et resipiscentiae. Prius fit cum Sponsore et capite
ad salutem membrorum : Posterius fit cum membris in capite et
sponsore."
The same view is taken by Witsius : ^ " Ut Foederis gratiae
natura penitius perspecta sit, duo imprimis distincte consideranda
sunt. (1.) Pactum, quod inter Deum Patrem et mediatorem
Christum intercedit. (2.) Testamentaria ilia dispositio, qua Deus
electis salutem aeternam, et omnia eo pertinentia, immutabili foedere
addicit. Prior conventio Dei cum mediatore est: posterior Dei
cum electis. Haec illam supponit, and in ilia fundatur."
§ 4. Covenant of Redemption.
By this is meant the covenant between the Father and the Son
in reference to the salvation of man. This is a subject which, from
its nature, is entirely beyond our comprehension. We must receive
the teachings of the Scriptures in relation to it without presuming
to penetrate the mystery which naturally belongs to it. There is
only one God, one divine Being, to whom all the attributes of
divinity belong. But in the Godhead there are three persons, the
same in substance, and equal in power and glory. It lies in the
nature of personality, that one person is objective to another. If,
1 xn. ii. 12 ; edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 157, 158.
2 Be (Economia Fcederum, lib. ii. ii. 1, edit. 1712, p. 130.
360 PART m. ch. n. — the covenant of grace.
therefore, the Father and the Son are distinct persons the one may
be the object of the acts of the other. The one may love, address,
and commune with the other. The Father may send the Son,
may give Him a work to do, and promise Him a recompense. All
this is indeed incomprehensible to us, but being clearly taught in
Scripture, it must enter into the Christian's faith.
In order to prove that there is a covenant between the Father
and the Son, formed in eternity, and revealed in time, it is not
necessary that we should adduce passages of the Scriptures in
which this truth is expressly asserted. There are indeed passages
which are equivalent to such direct assertions. This is implied in
the frequently recurring statements of the Scripture that the plan
of God respecting the salvation of men was of the nature of a
covenant, and was formed in eternity. Paul says that it was hidden
for ages in the divine mind ; that it was before the foundation of the
world. Christ speaks of promises made to Him before his advent ;
and that He came into the world in execution of a commission
which He had received from the Father. The parallel so distinctly
drawn between Adam and Christ is also a proof of the point in
question. As Adam was the head and representative of his pos-
terity, so Christ is the head and representative of his people. And
as God entered into covenant with Adam so He entered into
covenant with Christ. This, in Rom. v. 12-21, is set forth as the
fundamental idea of all God's dealings with men, both in their fall
and in their redemption.
The proof of the doctrine has, however, a much wider foundation.
When one person assigns a stipulated work to another person with
the promise of a reward upon the condition of the performance of
that work, there is a covenant. Nothing can be plainer than that
all this is true in relation to the Father and the Son. The Father
gave the Son a work to do ; He sent Him into the world to perform
it, and promised Him a great reward when the work was accom-
plished. Such is the constant representation of the Scriptures.
We have, therefore, the contracting parties, the promise, and the
condition. These are the essential elements of a covenant. Such
being the representation of Scripture, such must be the truth to
which we are bound to adliere. It is not a mere figure, but a real
transaction, and should be regarded and treated as such if we would
nnderstand aright the plan of salvation. In the fortieth Psalm,
expoimded by the Apostle as referring to the Messiah, it is said,
" Lo, I come : in the volume of the book it is written of me, I
delight to do thv will," i. g., to execute thy purpose, to carry out
§4.] COVENANT OF REDEMPTION. 361
thy plan. " By the which will," says the Apostle (Heb. x. 10),
" we are sanctified («. g., cleansed from the guilt of sin), through
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Christ came,
therefore, in execution of a purpose of God, to fulfil a work which
had been assigned Him. He, therefore, in John xvii. 4, says, "I
have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." This was
said at the close of his earthly course. At its beginning, when yet a
child. He said to his parents, " Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business?" (Luke ii. 49.) Our Lord speaks of Himself,
and is spoken of as sent into the world. He says that as the Father
had sent Him into the world, even so had He sent his disciples
into the world. (John xvii. 18.) "When the fulness of the time
was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman." (Gal. iv. 4.)
" God sent his only begotten Son into the world." (1 John iv. 9.)
God "sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (Verse 10.)
It is plain, therefore, that Christ came to execute a work, that He
was sent of the Father to fulfil a plan, or preconceived design. It
is no less plain that special promises were made by the Father to
the Son, suspended upon the accomplishment of the work assigned
Him. This may appear as an anthropological mode of representing
a transaction between the persons of the adorable Trinity. But it
must be received as substantial truth. The Father did give the
Son a work to do, and He did promise to Him a reward upon its
accomplishment. The transaction was, therefore, of the nature of
a covenant. An obligation was assumed by the Son to accomplish
the work assigned Him ; and an obligation was assumed by the
Father to grant Him the stipulated reward. The infinitude of
God does not prevent these things being possible.
As the exhibition of the work of Christ in the redemption of
man constitutes a large part of the task of the theologian, all that
is proper in this place is a simple reference to the Scriptural state-
ments on the subject.
The Work assigned to the Redeemer.
(1.) He was to assume our nature, humbling Himself to be born
of a woman, and to be found in fashion as a man. This was to be
a real incarnation, not a mere theophany such as occurred repeat-
edly under the old dispensation. He was to become flesh ; to take
part of flesh and body ; to be bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh, made In all things like unto his brethren, yet without sin,
that He might be touched with a sense of our infirmities, and able
to sympathize with those who are tempted, being Himself also
362 PART III. Ch. II. — THE COVENANT OF GRACE.
tempted. (2.) He was to be made under the law, voluntarily
undertaking to fulfil all righteousness by obeying the law of God
perfectly in all the forms in which it had been made obligatory on
man. (3.) He was to bear our sins, to be a curse for us, offering
Himself as a sacrifice, or propitiation to God in expiation of the sins
of men. This involved his whole life of humiliation, sorrow, and
suffering, and his ignominious death upon the cross under the
hiding of his Father's countenance. What He was to do after this
pertains to his exaltation and reward.
The Promises made to the Redeemer.
Such, in general terms, was the work which the Son of God
undertook to perform. The promises of the Father to the Son
conditioned on the accomplishment of that work, were, (1.) That
He would prepare Him a body, fit up a tabernacle for Him, formed
as was the body of Adam by the immediate agency of God. uncon-
taminated and without spot or blemish. (2.) That He would give
the Spirit to Him without measure, that his whole human nature
should be replenished with grace and strength, and sc adorned
with the beauty of holiness that He should be altogether lovely.
(3.) That He would be ever at his right hand to support and
comfort Him in the darkest hours of his conflict witii the powers
of darkness, and that He would ultimately bruise Satan under his
feet. (4.) That He would deliver Him from the power of death,
and exalt Him to his own right hand in heaven ; and tliat all power
in heaven and earth should be committed to Him. (o.) That He,
as the Theanthropos and head of the Church, should have tho Holy
Spirit to send to whom He willed, to renew their hearts, to satisfy
and comfort them, and to qualify them for his service and kingdom.
(6.) That all given to Him by the Father should come to Him,
and be kept by Him, so that none of them should be lost. (7.) That
a multitude whom no man can number should thus be made par-
takers of his redemption, and that ultimately the kingdom of the
Messiah should embi-ace all the nations of the earth. (8.) That
through Christ, in Him, and in his ransomed Church, there should
be made the highest manifestation of the divine perfections to all
orders of holy intelligences throughout eternity. The Son of God
was thus to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.
§ 5. The Covenant of Grace.
In virtue of what the Son of God covenanted to perform, and
what in the fulness of time He actually accomplished, agreeably to
§5.] COVENANT OF GRACE. 363
the stipulations of the compact with the Father, two things follow.
First, salvation is offered to all men on the condition of faith in
Christ. Our Lord commanded his disciples to go into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature. The gospel, however, is
the offer of salvation upoii the conditions of the covenant of grace.
In this sense, the covenant of grace is formed with all mankind.
And, therefore, Turrettin ^ says, " Foedus hoc gratiae est pactum
gratuitum inter Deum offensum et hominem offendentem in Christo
initum, in quo Deus homini gratis propter Christum remissionem
peccatorum et salutem pollicetur, homo vero eadem gratia fretus
pollicetur fidem et obedientiam." And the Westminster Confession ^
says, "Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that
covenant [namely, by the covenant of works], the Lord was pleased
to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace : wherein
He freely offereth unto sinners [and all sinners] life and salvation
by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be
saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto
life, his Holy Spirit, to make them able and vvilling to believe." If
this, therefore, were all that is meant by those who make the parties
to the covenant of grace, God and mankind in genei'al and all
mankind equally, there would be no objection to the doctrine. For
it is undoubtedly true that God offers to all and every man eternal
life on condition of faith in Jesus Christ. But as it is no less true
that the whole scheme of redemption has special reference to those
given by the Father to the Son, and of whom our Lord says, "All
that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out" (John vi. 37), it follows, secondly,
from the nature of the covenant between the Father and the Son,
that the covenant of grace has also special reference to the elect.
To them God has promised to give his Spirit in order that they
may believe ; and to them alone all the promises made to believers
belong. Those who ignore the distinction between the covenants
of redemption and of grace, merging the latter in the former, of
course represent the parties to the covenant to be God and Christ
as the head and representative of his own people. And therefore
mankind, as such, are in no sense parties. All that is important
is, that we should adopt such a mode of representation as will
comprehend the various facts recognized in the Scriptui'es. It is
one of those facts that salvation is offered to all men on the condition
of faith in Christ. And therefore to that extent, or, in a sense
which accounts for that fact, the covenant of grace is made with
1 xn. ii. 5, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. p. 156. 2 Chap. vii. § 3.
364 PART m. Ch. II. — the covenant of grace. .
all men. The great sin of those who hear the gospel is that they
refuse to accept of that covenant, and therefore place themselves
w^ithout its pale.
Christ as Mediator of the Covenant.
As Christ is a party to the covenant of redemption, so He is con-
stantly represented as the mediator of the covenant of grace ; not
only in the sense of an internuncius, as Moses was a mediator
between God and the people of Israel, but in the sense, (1.) That
it was through his intervention, and solely on the ground of what
He had done, or promised to do, that God entered into this new
covenant with fallen men. And, (2.) in the sense of a surety.
He guarantees the fulfilment of all the promises and conditions of
the covenant. His blood was the blood of the covenant. That is,
his death had all the effects of a federal sacrifice, it not only bound
the parties to the contract, but it also secured the fulfilment of all
its provisions. Hence He is called not only Mco-iVj/s, but also'Eyyvos
(Heb. vii. 22), a sponsor, or surety/. By fulfilling the conditions on
which the promises of the covenant of redemption were suspended,
the veracity and justice of God are pledged to secure the salvation
of his people ; and this secures the fidelity of his people. So that
Christ answers both for God and man. His work renders certain
the gifts of God's grace, and the perseverance of his people in faith
and obedience. He is therefore, in every sense, our salvation.
The Condition of the Covenant.
The condition of the covenant of grace, so far as adults are con-
cerned, is faith in Christ. That is, in order to partake of the
benefits of this covenant we must receive the Lord Jesus Christ as
the Son of God in whom and for whose sake its blessings are
vouchsafed to the cliildren of men. Until we thus believe we are
aliens and strangers from the covenant of promise, without God
and without Christ. We must acquiesce in this covenant, renoun-
cing all other methods of salvation, and consenting to be saved on
the terms which it proposes, before we are made partakers of its
benefits. The word " condition," however, is used in two senses.
Sometimes it means the meritorious consideration on the ground
of which certain benefits are bestowed. In this sense perfect
obedience was the condition of the covenant originally made with
Adam. Had he retained his integrity he would have merited the
promised blessing. For to him that worketh the reward is not of
grace but of debt. In the same sense the work of Christ is the
§5.] COVENANT OF GRACE. 365
condition of the covenant of redemption. It was the meritorious
ground, laying a foundation in justice for the fulfilment of the
promises made to Him by the Father. But in other cases, by
condition we merely mean a sine qua non. A blessing may be
pi'omised on condition that it is asked for ; or that there is a will-
ingness to receive it. There is no merit in the asking or in the
willingness, which is the ground of the gift. It remains a gratui-
tous favour : but it is, nevertheless, suspended upon the act of
asking. It is in this last sense only that faith is the condition of
the covenant of grace. There is no merit in believing. It is only
the act of receiving a proffered favour. In either case the necessity
is equally absolute. Without the work of Christ there would be
no salvation ; and without faith there is no salvation. He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. He that believeth not,
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
The Promises of the Covenant.
The promises of this covenant are all included in the comprehen-
sive formula, so often occurring in the Scriptures, " I will be your
God, and ye shall be my people." This involves the complete
restoration of our normal relation to God. All ground of aliena-
tion, every bar to fellowship is removed. He communicates Him-
self in his fulness to his people ; and they become his by entire
conformity to his will and devotion to his service, and are the
special objects of his favour.
God is said to be our God, not only because He is the God
whom we acknowledge and profess to worship and obey, as He was
the God of the Hebrews in distinction from the Gentiles who did
not acknowledge his existence or profess to be his worshippers.
But He is our God, — our infinite portion ; the source to us of all
that God is to those who are the objects of his love. His perfec-
tions are revealed to us as the highest knowledge ; they are all
pledged for our protection, blessedness, and glory. His beincr our
God implies also that He assures us of his love, and admits us
to communion with Himself. As his favour is life, and his loving
kindness better than life ; as the vision of God, the enjoyment of
his love and fellowship with Him secure the highest possible exalta-
tion and beatification of his creatures, it is plain that the promise to
be our God, in the Scriptural sense of the term, includes all con-
ceivable and all possible good.
When it is said that we are to be his people it means, (1.) That
we are his peculiar possession. His delights are with the children
366 PART m. Ch. il — the covenant of grace.
of men. From the vai'ious orders of rational creatures He lias
chosen man to be the special object of his favour, and the special
medium through which and by which to manifest his glory. And
from the mass of fallen men He has, of his own good pleasure,
chosen an innumerable multitude to be his portion, as He conde-
scends to call them ; on whom He lavishes the plenitude of his
grace, and in whom He reveals his glory to the admiration of all
holy intelligences. (2.) That being thus selected for the special
love of God and for the highest manifestation of his glory, they are
in all things fitted for this high destiny. They are justified, sancti-
fied, and glorified. They are rendered perfectly conformed to his
image, devoted to his service, and obedient to his will.
§ 6. The Identity of the Covenant of Gfrace under all Dispensa-
tions.
By this is meant that the plan of salvation has, under all dispen-
sations, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian, been the
same. On this subject much diversity of opinion, and still more
of mode of statement has prevailed. Socinians say that under the
old economy, there was no promise of eternal life ; and that the
condition of salvation was not faith in Christ. The Remonstrants
admitted that the patriarchs were saved, and that they were saved
through Christ, i. e., in virtue of the work which the Redeemer
was to accomplish ; but they also questioned whether any direct
promise of eternal life was given in the Old Testament, or whether
faith in the Redeemer was the condition of acceptance with God.
On this subject the " Apology for the Confession of the Remon-
strants" says^ concerning faith in Jesus Christ, "Et certum esse
locum nullum esse unde appareat fidem istam sub V. T. prasceptam
fuisse, aut viguisse." And Episcopius ''^ says, "Ex his facile col-
ligere est, quid statuendum sit de qucestione ilia faniosa, An vitae
aeternae promissio etiam in Veteri foedere locum habuerit, vel potius
hi foedere ipso comprehensa fuerit. Si enim speciales promissiones
in foedere ipso veteri expressae videantur, fatendum est, nullam vitae
aeternae promissionem disertam in illis reperiri. Si quis contra sentiat,
ejus est locum dare ubi ilia exstat : quod puto impossibile esse. Sed
vero, si promissiones Dei generales videantur, fatendum ex altera
parte est, eas tales esse, ut promissio vitae aeternae non subesse tan-
tum videatur, sed ex Dei intentione earn eis subfuisse etiam credi
debeat."
1 Edit. Leyden, 1630, p. 91.
2 Itulilutianes Theologicoe, lib. ill. iv. 1; Works, Amsterdam, 1650, vol. i. p. 156.
§ 6.] THE IDENTITY OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 367
The Baptists, especially those of the time of the Reformation,
do not hold the common doctrine on this subject. The Anabaptists
not only spoke in very disparaging terms of the old economy and
of the state of the Jews under that dispensation, but it was neces-
sary to their peculiar system, that they should deny that the cov-
enant made with Abraham included the covenant of grace. Bap-
tists hold that infants cannot be church members, and that the sign
of such membership cannot properly be administered to any who
have not knowledge and faith. But it cannot be denied that in-
fants were included in the covenant made with Abraham, and that
they received circumcision, its appointed seal and sign. It is there-
fore essential to their theory that the Abrahamic covenant should
be I'egarded as a merely national covenant entirely distinct from the
covenant of grace.
The Romanists assumino; that saving grace is communicated
through the sacraments, and seeing that the mass of tlie ancient
Israelites, on many occasions at least, were rejected of God, not-
withstanding their participation of the sacraments then ordained,
were driven to assume a radical difference between the sacraments
of the Old Testament and those of the New. The former only
signified grace, the latter actually conveyed it. From this it fol-
lows that those living before the institution of the Christian sacra-
ments were not actually saved. Their sins were not remitted, but
pretermitted, passed over. At death they were not admitted into
heaven, but passed into a place and state called the limhus patrum^
where they remained in a negative condition until the coming of
Christ, who after his death descended to hell, sheol, for their de-
liverance.
In opposition to these different views the common doctrine of the
Church has ever been, that the plan of salvation has been the same
from the beginning. There is the same promise of deliverance
from the evils of the apostasy, the same Redeemer, the same con-
dition required for participation in the blessings of redemption, and
the same complete salvation for all who embrace the offers of divine
mercy.
In determining the degree of knowledge possessed by the ancient
people of God, we are not to be governed by our own capacity of
discovering from the Old Testament Scriptures the doctrines of
grace. What amount of supplementary instruction the people re-
ceived from the prophets, or what degree of divine illumination
was granted to them we cannot tell. It is, however, clear from
the writings of the New Testament, that the knowledge of the
368 PART m. Ch. n. — the covenant of grace.
plan of salvation current among the Jews at the time of the advent,
was much greater than we should deem possible from the mere
perusal of the Old Testament. They not only generally and con-
fidently expected the Messiah, who was to be a teacher as well as
a deliverer, but the devout Jews waited for the salvation of Israel.
They spoke as familiarly of the Holy Spirit and of the baptism
which He was to effect, as Christians now do. It is, principally,
from the assertions of the New Testament writers and from their
expositions of the ancient Scriptures, that we learn the amount of
truth revealed to those who lived before the coming of Christ.
From the Scriptures, therefore, as a whole, from the New Testa-
ment, and from the Old as interpreted by infallible authority in the
New, we learn that the plan of salvation has always been one and
the same ; having the same promise, the same Saviour, the same
condition, and the same salvation.
The Promise of Eternal Life made before the Advent.
That the promise was the same to those who lived before the
advent that it is to us, is plain. Immediately after the fall God
gave to Adam the promise of redemption. That promise was
contained in the prediction that the seed of the woman should
bruise the serpent's head. In this passage it is clear that the ser-
pent is Satan. He was the tempter, and on him the curse pro-
nounced was designed to fall. Bruising his head implies fatal
injury or overthrow. The prince of darkness who had triumphed
over our first parents, was to be cast down, and despoiled of his
victory. This overthrow was to be accomplished by the seed of
the woman. This phrase might mean the posterity of the woman,
and in this sense would convey an important truth ; man was to
triumph over Satan. But it evidently had a more specific reference.
It refers to one individual, who in a sense peculiar to himself, was
to be the seed of the woman. This is clear from the analogy of
prophecy. When it was promised to Abraham that in his seed all
the nations of the earth should be blessed ; it would be very
natural to understand by seed his posterity, the Hebrew people.
But we know certainly, from the direct assertion of the Apostle
(Gal. iii. 10), that one individual, namely, Christ, was intended.
So when Isaiah predicts that the " servant of the Lord " was to
suffer, to triumph, and to be the source of blessings to all people,
many understood, and many still understand him to speak of the
Jewish nation, as God so often speaks of his servant Israel. Yet
the servant intended was the Messiah, and the people were no
§ 6.] THE IDENTITY OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 369
further included in the prediction than when it is said that " salva-
tion is of the Jews." In all these and similar cases we have two
guides as to the real meaning of the Spirit. The one is found in
subsequent and explanatory declarations of the Scriptures, the other
is in the fulfilment of the predictions. We know from the event
who the seed of the woman ; who the seed of Abraham ; who the
Shiloh ; who the Son of David ; who the servant of the Lord Avere ;
for in Christ and by Him was fulfilled all that was predicted of
them. The seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent's head.
But it was Christ, and Christ alone, who came into the world to
destroy the works of the Devil. This he declared to be the purpose
of his mission. Satan was the strong man armed whom Christ
came to dispossess and to deliver from him those who were led
captive by him at his will. We have, then, the promise of redemp-
tion made to our first pai'ents immediately after the fall, to be by
them communicated to their descendants to be kept in perpetual
remembrance. This promise was repeated and amplified from time
to time, until the Redeemer actually came. In these additional
and fuller predictions, the nature of this redemption was set forth
with ever increasing clearness. This general promise included
many specific promises. Thus we find God promising to his faith-
ful people the forgiveness of their sins, restoration to his favour,
the renewing of their hearts, and the gift of his Spirit. No higher
blessings than these are oflfered under the Christian dispensation.
And for these blessings the ancient people of God earnestly longed
and prayed. The Old Testament, and especially the Psalms and
other devotional parts of the early Scriptures, are filled with the
record of such prayers and longings. Nothing can be plainer than
that pardon and the favour of God were promised' to holy men
before the coming of Christ, and these are the blessings which are
now promised to us.
The Apostle in Heb. xi. teaches that the hopes of the patriarchs
were not confined to the present life, but were fixed on a future
state of existence. Such a state, therefore, must have been revealed
to them, and eternal life must have been promised to them. Thus
he says (chapter xi. 10), that Abraham " looked for the city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." That this was
heaven is plain from verse 16, where it is said, " They desire a
better country, that is, an heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God ; for He hath prepared for them a city."
He tells us that these ancient worthies gladly sacrificed all earthly
good, and even life itself, " not accepting deliverance ; that they
VOL. II. 24
370 PART m. Ch. II. — the covenant of grace.
mio;ht obtain a better resurrection." That this was the common
faith of the Jews long before the coming of Christ appears from 2
Mace. vii. 9, where the dying martyr says to his tormentor, " Thou
like a fury takest us out of this present life, but the King of the
world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlast-
ing life." Our Lord teaches us that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
are still alive ; and that where Abraham is, is heaven. His bosom
was the resting-place of the faithful.
Christy the Redeemer, under both Dispensations.
This is a very imperfect exhibition of the evidence which the
Scriptures afford that the promise of redemption, and of all that
redemption includes, pardon, sanctification, the favour of God, and
eternal life, was made to the people of God from the beginning. It
is no less clear that the Redeemer is the same under all dispensa-
tions. He who was predicted as the seed of the woman, as the seed
of Abraham, the Son of David, the Branch, the Servant of the Lord,
the Prince of "Peace, is our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God
manifest in the flesh. He, therefore, from the beginning has been
held up as the hope of the world, the Salvator hominum. He
was set forth in all his offices, as Prophet, Priest, and King. His
work was described as a sacrifice, as well as a redemption. All
this is so obvious, and so generally admitted, as to render the cita-
tion of proof texts unnecessary. It is enough to refer to the general
declarations of the New Testament on this subject. Our Lord
commanded the Jews to search their Scriptures, because they tes-
tified of Him. He said that Moses and the prophets wrote of Him.
Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to the
disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. The
Apostles when they began to preach the gospel, not only ever}'-
where proved from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, but
they referred to them continually in support of everything which
they taught concerning his person and his work. It is from the Old
Testament they prove his dlvinit}^ ; his incarnation ; the sacrificial
natui'e of his death ; that He was truly a Priest to make reconcilia-
tion for the people, as well as a Prophet and a King ; and that He
was to die, to rise again on the third day, to ascend into heaven,
and to be invested with absolute authority over all the earth, and
over all orders of created beings. There is not a doctrine concern-
ing Christ, taught in the New Testament, which the Apostles do
not affirm to have been revealed under former dispensations. They
therefore distinctly assert that it was through Him and the efficacy
§ 6.] THE IDENTITY OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 371
of his death that men were saved before, as well as after his
advent. The Apostle Paul says (Rom. iii. 25), that Christ was
set forth as a propitiation for the remission of sins, not only if t<5
vvv Kaipw but also of the sins committed before the present time,
during the forbearance of God. And in Heb. ix. 15, it is still more
explicitly asserted that He died for the forgiveness of sin under the
first covenant. He was, therefore, as said in Rev. xiii. 8, the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Tiiis is at least the
common and most natural interpretation of that passage.
Such a revelation of the Messiah was undoubtedly made in the
Old Testament as to turn the eyes of the whole Jewish nation in
hope and faith. What the two disciples on the way to Emmaus
said, " We trusted it had been He who should have redeemed
Israel," reveals what was the general expectation and desire of the
people. Paul repeatedl}'' speaks of the Messiah as the hope of
Israel. The promise of redemption through Christ, he declared to
be the great object of the people's hope. When arraigned before
the tribunals of the Jews, and before Agrippa, he uniformly de-
clared that in preaching Christ and the resurrection, he had not
departed from the religion of the fathers, but adhered to it, while
his enemies had deserted it. " Now I stand, and am judged," he
says, " for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers."
(Acts xxvi. 6.) Again he said to the Jews in Rome, Acts xxviii.
20, " For the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain." See,
also, xxiii. 6 ; xxiv. 15. In Eph. i. 12, he designates the Jews as
ot TrporiX-TTLKOTes €v Tw X/atoTTw, those who hoped in the Messiah before
his advent. In Acts xiii. 7, he says the rulers of the Jews rejected
Christ because they knew not " the voices of the prophets wliich
are read every Sabbath day," which they *' fulfilled in condemning
Him." In Him Avas " the promise which was made unto the
fathers," he tells us (verses 32, 33), of which he says, " God hath
fulfilled tlie same unto us their children, in that He hath raised up
(or brought into view) Jesus," the long-expected Saviour. It is
needless to dwell upon this point, because the doctrine of a personal
Messiah who was to redeem tlie people of God, not only pervades
the Old Testament, but is everywhere in the New Testament de-
clared to be the great promise which is fulfilled in the advent and
work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith the Condition of Salvation from the Beginning.
As the same promise was made to those who lived before the
advent which is now made to us in the gospel, as the same Redeemer
372 PART in. ch. n. — the covenant of grace.
was revealed to them who is presented as the object of faith to us,
it of necessity follows that the condition, or terms of salvation, was
the same then as now. It was not mere faith or trust in God, or
simply piety, which was required, but faith in the promised Re-
deemer, or faith in the promise of redemption through the Messiah.
This is plain not only from the considerations just mentioned, but
also further, (1.) From the fact that the Apostle teaches that faith,
not works, was before as well as after Christ the condition of salva-
tion. This, in his Epistle to the Romans, he not only asserts, but
proves. He argues that from the nature of the case the justification
of sinners by works is a contradiction. If sinners, they are under
condemnation for their works, and tlierefore cannot be justified by
them. Moreover he proves that the Old Testament everywhere
speaks of gratuitous forgiveness and acceptance of men with God ;
but if gratuitous, it cannot be meritorious. He further argues from
the case of Abraham, who, according to the express declaration of
the Scriptures, was justified by faith ; and he quotes from the old
prophets the great principle, true then as now, that the "just shall
live by faith." (2.) In the second place, he proves that the faith
intended was faith in a promise and not merely general piety or
confidence toward God. Abraham, he says, "staggered not at tho
promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving
glory to God ; and being fully persuaded that what He had prom-
ised He was able also to perform." (Rom. iv. 20, 21.) (3.) The
Apostle proves that the specific promise which was the object of the
faith of the patriarch was the promise of redemption through Christ.
That promise they were required to believe ; and that the true
people of God did believe. The mass of the people mistook the
nature of the redemption promised ; but even in their case it was
the promise of redemption which was the object of their foith.
Those taught by the Spirit knew that it was a redemption from the
guilt and power of sin and from the consequent alienation from God.
In Gal. iii. 14, the Apostle therefore says that the blessing promised
to Abraham has come upon the Gentiles. That blessing, therefore,
was that which through the gospel is now offered to all men.
Not only, therefore, from these explicit declarations that faith in
the promised Redeemer was required from the beginrn'ng, but from
the admitted fact that the Old Testament is full of the doctrine of
redemption by the Messiah, it follows that those who received the
relio-ion of the Old Testament received that doctrine, and exercised
faith in the promise of God concerning his Son. The Epistle to tlie
Hebrews is designed in great part to show that the whole of the Old
§ 7.] DIFFERENT DISPENSATIONS. 373
dispensation was an adumbration of the New, and that it loses all
its value and import if its reference to Christ be ignored. To denj,
therefore, that the faith of the Old Testament saints was a faith in
the Messiah and his redempticm, is to deny that they had any knowl-
edge of the import of the revelations and promises of which they
were the recipients.
Paul, in Rom. iii. 21, says that the method of salvation revealed
in the gospel had been already revealed in the law and the prophets;
and his definite object, in Gal. iii. 13-28, is to prove that the cov-
enant under which we live and according to the terms of which we
are to be saved, is the identical covenant made with Abraham, in
which the promise of redemption was made on the condition of faith
in Him in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed.
This is a covenant anterior to the Mosaic law, and which that law
could not set aside or invalidate.
The covenant of grace, or plan of salvation, being the same in
all its elements from the beginning, it follows, first, in opposition to
the Anabaptists, that the people of God before Christ constituted a
Church, and that the Church has been one and the same under all
dispensations. It has always had the same promise, the same
Redeemer, and the same condition of membership, namely, faith in
the Son of God as the Saviour of the world.
It follows from the same premises, in opposition to the Romanists,
that the salvation of the people of God who died before the coming
of Christ, was complete. Tliey were truly pardoned, sanctified,
and, at death, admitted to that state into which those dying in the
Christian faith ai-e now received. This is confirmed by what our
Lord and the Apostles teach. The salvation promised us is that on
which the Old Testament saints have already entered. The Gentile
believers are to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The
bosom of Abraham was the place of rest for all the faithful. All
that Paul claims for believers under the gospel is, that they are
the sons of Abraham, and partakers of his inheritance. If this is
so, then the whole ritual theory which assumes that grace and sal-
vation are communicated only through Christian sacraments must
be false.
§ 7. Different Dispensations,
First, from Adam to Abraham.
Although the covenant of grace has always been the same, the
dispensations of that covenant have changed. The ftrst dispensation
extended from Adam to Abraliam. Of tliis period we have so few
374 PART m. Ch. II.— the covenant of grace.
records, that we cannot determine liow far the truth was revealed,
or wliat measures were adopted for its preservation. All we know
is, that the original promises concerning the seed of the woman, as
the Redeemer of our race, had been given ; and that the worship
of God by sacrifices had been instituted. That sacrifices were a
divine institution, and designed to teach the method of salvation,
may be inferred, (1.) From the fact that it is the method which the
common consciousness of men has everywhere led them to adopt.
It is that which their relation to God as sinners demanded. It is
the dictate of conscience that guilt requii'es expiation ; and that
expiation is made by the shedding of blood. Sacrifices, therefore,
not being an arbitrary institution, but one having its foundation in
our real relation to God as sinners, we may infer that it was by his
command, direct or indirect, that such sacrifices were offered.
(2.) This may also be inferred from God's approving them, adopt-
ing them, and incorporating them in the religious observances
subsequently enjoined. (3.) The fact that man was to be saved by
the sacrifice of Christ, and that this was the great event to which
the institutions of the earlier dispensations refer, renders it clear
that this reference was designed, and that it was founded upon the
institution of God.
The Second Dispensation.
The second dispensation extended from Abraham to Moses.
This was distinguished from the former, (1.) By the selection of
the descendants of Abraham to be the peculiar people of God.
They were chosen in order to preserve the knowledge of the true
religion in the midst of the general apostasy of .mankind. To this
end special revelations were made to them, and God entered into
a covenant with them, promising that He would be their God, and
that they should be his people. (2.) Besides thus gathering his
Church out of the world, and making its members a peculiar peoj)le,
distinguished by circumcision from the Gentiles around them, the
promise of redemption was made more definite. The Redeemer
was to be of the seed of Abraham. He was to be one person. The
salvation He was to effect should pertain to all nations. (3.) Sub-
sequently it was made known that the Deliverer was to be of the
tribe of Judah.
The Third Dispensation.
The third dispensation of this covenant was from Moses to Christ.
All that belonged to the previous periods was taken up and included
in this. A multitude of new ordinances of polity, worship, and
§ 7.] DIFFERENT DISPENSATIONS. 375
religion were enjoined. A priesthood and a complicated system of
sacrifices were introduced. The promises were rendered more defi-
nite, setting forth more clearly by the instructions of the prophets
the person and work of the coming Redeemer as the prophet, priest,
and king of his people. The nature of the redemption He was to
effect and the nature of the kingdom He was to establish were thus
more and more clearly revealed. We have the direct autiiority of
the New Testament for believing that the covenant of grace, or
plan of salvation, thus underlay the whole of the institutions of the
Mosaic period, and that their principal design was to teach through
types and symbols what is now taught in explicit terms in the
gospel. Moses, we are told (Heb. iii. 5), was faithful as a servant
to testify concerning the things which were to be spoken after.
Besides this evangelical character which unquestionably belongs
to the Mosaic covenant, it is presented in two other aspects in the
Word of God. First, it was a national covenant with the Hebrew
people. In this view the parties were God and the people of Israel;
the promise was national security and prosperity; the condition was
the obedience of the people as a nation to the Mosaic law ; and the
mediator was Moses. In this aspect it was a legal covenant. It
said, " Do this and live." Secondly, it contained, as does also the
New Testament, a renewed proclamation of the original covenant
of works. It is as true now as in the days of Adam, it always has
been and always must be true, that rational creatures who perfectly
obey the law of God are blessed in the enjoyment of his favour ;
and that those who sin are subject to his wrath and curse. Our
Lord assured the young man who came to Him for instruction that
if he kept the commandments he should live. And Paul says
(Rom. ii. 6) that God will render to every man according to his
deeds ; tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth
evil ; but glory, honour, and peace to every man who worketh
good. This arises fi'om the relation of intelligent creatures to God.
It is in fact nothing but a declaration of the eternal and immutable
principles of justice. If a man rejects or neglects the gospel, these
are the principles, as Paul teaches in the opening chapters of his
Epistle to the Romans, according to which he will be judged. If
he will not be under grace, if he will not accede to the method of
salvation by grace, he is of necessity under the law.
These different aspects under which the Mosaic economy is
presented account for the apparently inconsistent way in which it is
spoken of in the New Testament. (1.) When viewed in relation
to the people of God before the advent, it is represented as divine
376 PART III. ch. n. — the covenant of grace.
and obligatory. (2.) When viewed in relation to the state of the
Church after the advent, it is declared to be obsolete. It is repre-
sented as the lifeless husk from which the living kernel and germ
have been extracted, a body from which the soul has departed.
(3.) When viewed according to its true import and design as a
preparatory dispensation of the covenant of grace, it is spoken of as
teaching the same gospel, the same method of salvation as that
which the Apostles themselves preached. (4.) When viewed, in
the light in which it was regarded by those who rejected the gospel,
as a mere legal system, it was declared to be a ministration of death
and condemnation. (2 Cor. iii. 6-18.) (5.) And when contrasted
with the new or Christian economy, as a different mode of revealing
the same covenant, it is spoken of as a state of tutelage and bondage,
far different from the freedom and filial spirit of the dispensation
under which we now live.
The Crospel Dispensation.
The gospel dispensation is called new in reference to the Mosaic
economy, which was old, and about to vanish away. It is distin-
guished from the old economy, —
1. In being catholic, confined to no one people, but designed and
adapted to all nations and to all classes of men.
2. It is more spiritual, not only in that the types and ceremonies
of the Old Testament are done away, but also in that the revela-
tion itself is more inward and spiritual. What was then made
known objectiA^ely, is now, to a greater extent, written on the
heart. (Heb. viii. 8-11.) It is incomparably more clear and
explicit in its teachings.
4. It is more purely evangelical. Even the New Testament, as
we have seen, contains a legal element, it reveals the law still as
a covenant of works binding on those who reject the gospel ; but in
the New Testament the gospel greatly predominates over the law.
Whereas, under the Old Testament, the law predominated over
the gospel.
5. The Christian economy is specially the dispensation of the
Spirit. The great blessing promised of old, as consequent on the
coming of Christ, was the effusion of the Spirit on all flesh, i. e.,
on all nations and on all classes of men. This was so distinguish-
ing a characteristic of the Messianic period that the evangelist
says, " The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus
was not yet glorified." (John vii. 39.) Our Lord promised that
after his death and ascension He would send the Comforter, the
§ 7.] DIFFERENT DISPENSATIONS. 377
Spirit of truth, to abide with his people, to guide them into the
knowledge of the truth, and to convince the world of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment to come. He charged the Apostles
to remain at Jerusalem until they had received this power from on
high. And in explanation of the events of the day of Pentecost,
the Apostle Peter said, " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof
we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God
exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the
Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."
(Acts ii. 32, 33.)
6. The old dispensation was temporary and preparatory ; the
new is permanent and final. In sending forth his disciples to
preach the gospel, and in promising them the gift of the Spirit, He
assured them that He would be with them in that work unto the
end of the world. This dispensation is, therefore, the last before
the restoration of all things ; the last, that is, designed for the
conversion of men and the ingathering of the elect. Afterwards
comes the end ; the resurrection and tiie final judgment. In the
Old Testament there are frequent intimations of another and a
better economy, to which the Mosaic institutions were merely
preparatory. But we have no intimation in Scripture that the
dispensation of the Spirit is to give way for a new and better
dispensation for the conversion of the nations. When the gospel
is fully preached, then comes the end.
CHAPTER III.
PERSON OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Preliminary Remarks.
1. The most mysterious and the most familiar fact of conscious-
ness and experience is the union of soul and body in the constitution
of our nature. According to the common faith of mankind and of
the Churcli, man consists of two distinct substances, soul and body.
By substance is meant that which is. It is the entity in which
properties, attributes, and qualities inhere, and of which they are
the manifestations. It is therefore something more than mere force.
It is something more than a collective name for a certain number of
properties which appear in combination. It is that which continues,
and remains unchanged under all the varying phenomena of which
it may be the subject. The substance which we designate the soul,
is immaterial, that is, it has none of the properties of matter. It is
spiritual, i. e., it has all the properties of a spirit. It is a self-
conscious, intelligent, voluntary agent. The substance which we
call the bofly, on the other hand, is material. That is, it has all
the properties of matter and none of the properties of mind or spirit.
This is the first fact universally admitted concerning the constitution
of our nature.
2. The second fact concerns the nature of the union between
the soul and body. It is, (a.) A personal union. Soul and body
constitute one individual man, or human person. There is but
one consciousness. It is the man or person who is conscious of
sensations and of thoughts, of affections of the body and of the acts
of the mind. (5.) It is a union without mixture or confusion. The
soul remains spirit, and the body remains matter. Copper and
zinc combined form brass. The constituent elements lose their
distinctive characteristics, and produce a third substance. There
is no such mixture in the union of the soul and body. The
two remain distinct. Neither is there a transfer of any of the
properties of the one to the other. No property of the mind is
transferred to the body ; and no property of the body is transferred
to the mind. (<?.) Nevertheless the union is not a mere inhabita-
§1.] PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 379
tion, a union of contact or in space. The soul does not dwell in
the body as a man dwells in a house or in his garments. Tiie body
is part of himself, and is necessary to his completeness as a man.
He is in every part of it, and is conscious of the slightest change in
the state of even the least important of its members.
3. Thirdly, the consequences of this union of the soul and
body are, (a.) A Koivwvia iSiw/xarajv, or communion of attributes.
That is, the person is the possessor of all the attributes both of
the soul and of the body. We may predicate of the man whatev^'
may be predicated of his body ; and we may predicate of him what-
ever may be predicated of his soul. We say of the man that he is
tall or short ; that he is sick or well ; that he is handsome or de-
formed. In like manner, we may say that he is judicious, wise, good,
benevolent, or learned. Whatever is true of either element of his
constitution is true of the man. What is true of the one, however,
is not true of the other. When the body is wounded or burnt it is
not the soul that is the subject of these accidents ; and when the
soul is penitent or believing, or enlightened and informed, the body
is not the subject spoken of. Each has its properties and changes,
but the person or man is the subject of them all. (6.) Hence,
inconsistent, or apparently contradictory affirmations may be made
of the same person. We may say that he is weak and that he is
strong ; that he is mortal and immortal ; that he is a spirit, and
that he is dust and ashes, (c.) We may designate the man from
one element of his nature when what we predicate of him is true
only of the other element. We may call liim a spirit and yet say
that he hungers and thirsts. We may call him a worm of the dust
when we speak of him as the subject of regeneration. That is, the
person may be designated from either nature when the pi'edicate
belongs to the other, (c?.) As in virtue of the personal union of
the soul and body all the properties of either are properties of
the man, so all the acts of either are the acts of the man. Some
of our acts are purely mental, as thinking, repenting, and believing;
some are purely bodily, as the processes of digestion, assimilation,
and the circulation of the blood ; some are mixed, as all voluntary
acts, as walking, speaking, and writing. In these there is a direct
concurrence or cooperation of the mind and body. These several
classes of acts are acts of the man. It is the man who thinks ; it is
the man who speaks and writes ; and the man who digests and
assimilates his food, (g.) A fifth consequence of this hypostatic
union is the exaltation of the body. The reason why the body of a
man and its life are so immeasurably exalted above those of a brute
380 PART m. ch. in. — the person of christ.
is that it is in personal union with a rational and immortal soul. It
is this also which gives the body its dignity and beauty. The
gorgeous plumage of the bird, or the graceful symmetry of the
antelope, are as nothing compared to the erect figure and intellect-
ual beauty of man. The mind irradiates the body, and imparts to
it a dignity and value which no configuration of mere matter could
possess. At the same time the soul is not degraded by its union
with the body. It was so arrayed before the fall, and is to be
clothed with a body in its glorified state in heaven.
The union of soul and body in the constitution of man is the
analogue of the union of the divine and human nature in the person
of Christ. No analogy is expected to answer in all points. There
is in this case enough of resemblance to sustain faith and rebuke un-
belief. There is nothing in the one more mysterious or inscrutable
than in the other. And as the difficulties to the understanding in
the union of two distinct substances, matter and mind, in the person
of man have induced many to deny the plainest facts of conscious-
ness, so the difficulties of the same kind attending the doctrine of
the union of two natures, the one human and the other divine in
the person of Christ, have led many to reject the plainest facts of
Scripture.
§ 2. The Scriptural Facts concerning the Person of Christ.
The facts which the Bible teaches concerning the person of Christ
are, first, that He was truly man, i. e., He had a perfect or com-
plete human nature. Hence everything that can be predicated of
man (that is, of man as man, and not of man as fallen) can be predi-
cated of Christ. Secondly, He was truly God, or had a perfect
divine nature. Hence everything that can be predicated of God
can be predicated of Christ. Thirdly, He was one person. The
same person, self, or Ego, who said, " I thirst," said, " Before
Abraham was, I am." This is the whole doctrine of the incarna-
tion as it lies in the Scriptures and in the faith of the Church.
Proof of the Doctrine.
The proof of this doctrine includes three distinct classes of pas-
sages of Scripture, or may be presented in three different forms.
First, the proof of the several elements of the doctrine separately.
Secondly, the current language of the Scriptures which speak of
Christ, from beginning to end, sometimes as man and sometimes
as God; and combine the two modes of statement, or pass from the
§ 2.] THE SCRIPTURAL FACTS. 381
one to the other as naturally and as easily as they do when speaking
of man as mortal and immortal, or as corporeal and as spiritual.
Thirdly, there are certain passages of Scripture in which the doc-
trine of the incarnation is formally presented and dogmatically
asserted.
First Argument^ all the JElements of the Doctrine separately
taught.
First, the Scriptures teach that Christ was truly man, or had a
complete human nature. That is, He had a true body and a rational
soul.
Christ had a True Body.
By a true body is meant a material body, composed of flesh and
blood, in everything essential like the bodies of ordinary men. It
was not a phantasm, or mere semblance of a body. Nor was it
fashioned out of any heavenly or ethereal substance. This is plain
because He was born of a woman. He was conceived in the womb
of the Virgin Mary, nourished of her substance so as to be consub-
stantial with her. His body increased in stature, passing through
the ordinary process of development from infancy to manhood. It
was subject to all the affections of a human body. It was subject
to pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, suffering, and death. It
could be seen, felt, and handled. The Scriptures declare it to have
been flesh and blood. " Forasmuch then as the children are par-
takers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the
same." (Hebrews ii. 14.) Our Lord said to his terrified disciples,
"A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." (Luke
xxiv. 39.) He was predicted in the Old Testament as the seed of
the woman; the seed of Abraham; the Son of David. He was de-
clared to be a man ; a man of sorrows ; the man Christ Jesus ;
and He called Himself the Son of Man. This desig-nation occurs
some eighty times in the Gospel. Nothing, therefore, is revealed
concerning Christ more distinctly than that He had a true body.
Christ had a Rational Soul.
It is no less plain that He had a rational soul. He thought,
reasoned, and felt ; was joyful and sorrowful ; He increased in
wisdom; He was ignorant of the time when the day of judgment
should come. He must, therefore, have had a finite human intel-
ligence. These two elements, a true body and a rational soul,
constitute a perfect or complete human nature, which is thus proved
to have entered into the composition of Christ's person.
382 PART m. Ch. m. -the person of CHRIST.
Christ is truly God.
Secondly, the Scriptures, with equal clearness, declare that
Christ was truly God. This has been already proved at length.
All divine names and titles are applied to Him. He is called God,
the mighty God, the great God, God over all ; Jehovah ; Lord ;
the Lord of lords and the King of kings. All divine attributes
are ascribed to Him. He is declared to be omnipresent, omniscient,
almighty, and immutable, the same yesterday, Jo-day, and forever.
He is set forth as the creator and upholder and ruler of the universe.
All things were created by Him and for Him ; and by Him all
things consist. He is the object of worship to all intelligent crea-
tures, even the highest; all the angels (^. e., all creatures between
man and God) are commanded to prostrate themselves before Him.
He is the object of all the religious sentiments ; of reverence, love,
faith, and devotion. To Him men and angels are responsible for
their character and conduct. He required that men should honour
Him as they honoured the Father ; that they should exercise the
same faith in Him that they do in God. He declares that He and
the Father are one ; that those who had seen Him had seen the
Father also. He calls all men unto him; promises to forgive their
sins ; to send them the Holy Spirit ; to give them rest and peace ;
to raise them up at the last day ; and to give them eternal life. God
is not more, and cannot promise more, or do more than Christ is
said to be, to promise, and to do. He has, therefore, been the
Christian's God from the beginning, in all ages and in all places.
Christ One Person.
Thirdly, He was, nevertheless, although perfect man and perfect
God, but one person. There is, in the first place, the absence of
all evidence of a twofold personality in Christ. Tiie Scriptures
reveal the Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct persons in the God-
head, because they use the personal pronouns in reference to each
other. The Father says Thou to the Son, and the Sou says TIiou
to the Father. The Father says to the Son, " I will give thee ; "
and the Son says, " Lo, I come to do thy will." Moreover the one
is objective to the other. The Father loves and sends the Son ;
the Son loves and obeys the Father. The same is true of the
Spirit. There is nothing analogous to this in the case of Christ.
The one nature is never distinguished from the other as a distinct
person. The Son of God never addresses the Son of Man as a
different person from Himself. The Scriptures reveal but one
§ 2.] THE SCRIPTURAL FACTS. * 383
Christ. In the second place, besides this negative proof, the Bible
affords all the evidence of the individual personality of our Lord
that the case admits of. He always says I, me, mine. He is
always addressed as Thou, thee, thine. He is always spoken of as
He, his, him. It was the same person to whom it was said,
*' Thou art not yet fifty years old ; " and " Thou, Lord, in the
beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens
are the works of thine hands." The individual personality of
Christ is set forth as clearly and as variously as that of any other
personage of whose history the Scriptures give us the record. In
teaching that Christ had a perfect human and a perfect divine
nature, and is one person, the Bible teaches the whole doctrine of
the incarnation as it has entered into the faith of the Church from
the beginning.
Second Argument^ from the Current Representations of Scripture.
The current language of Scripture concerning Christ proves
that He was at once divine and human. In tlie Old Testament,
He is set forth as the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah and
the family of David ; as to be born of a virgin in the town of
Bethlehem ; as a man of sorrows ; as meek and lowly ; as bearing
the chastisement of our sins, and pouring out his soul unto death.
He is everywhere represented as a man. At the same time He is
everywhere represented as God ; He is called the Son of God,
Immanuel, the Mighty God, Jehovah our righteousness ; and He
is spoken of as from everlasting ; as enthroned in heaven and
receiving the adoration of angels.
In the New Testament, the same mode of representation is con-
tinued. Our Lord, in speaking of Himself, and the Apostles when
speaking of Him, uniformly speak of Him as a man. The New
Testament gives his genealogy to prove that He was of the house
and lineage of David. It records his birth, life, and death. It
calls Him the Son of Man, the man Christ Jesus. Bat with like
uniformity our Lord assumes, and the Apostles attribute to Him a
divine nature. He declares Himself to be the Son of God, existing
from eternity, having all power in heaven and in eartii, entitled to
all the reverence, love, and obedience due to God. The Apostles
worship Him; they call Him the great God and Saviour; they ac-
knowledge tlieir dependence upon Him and responsibility to Him;
and they look to Him for par(h)n, sanctification, and eternal life.
These conflicting rejiresentations, this constant setting forth the
same person as man, and also as God, admits of no solution but in
384 PART m. Ch. IIL — the person of CHRIST.
the doctrine of the incarnation. This is the key to the whole Bible.
If this doctrine be denied all is confusion and contradiction. If it
be admitted all is light, harmony, and power. Christ is both God
and man, in two distinct natures, and one person forever. This is
the great mystery of Godliness. God manifest in the flesh is the
distinguishing doctrine of the religion of the Bible, without which
it is a cold and lifeless corpse.
Third Argument, from Particular Passages of Scripture.
Although, as appears from what has already been said, the doc-
trine of the incarnation does not rest on isolated proof-texts, but
upon the broad basis of the whole revelation of God concerning the
person and work of his Son, yet there are some passages in which
this doctrine is so clearly stated in all its elements, that they cannot
be properly overlooked in treating of this subject.
To this class of passages belongs, —
1. The first chapter of John, verses 1—14. It is here taught con-
cerning the Logos, (1.) That He existed in eternity. (2.) That
He was in intimate relation to God. (3.) That He was God.
(4.) That He was the Creator of all things. (5.) In Him was
life. Having life in himself. He is the source of life to all that live.
That is, He is the source of natural, of intellectual, and of spiritual
life. (6.) And, therefore, He is the true light; that is, the foun-
tain of all knowledge and all holiness. (7.) He came into the
world, and the world although made by Him, did not recognize
Him. (8.) He came to his own people, and even they did not
receive Him. (9.) He became flesh, i. e., He assumed our nature,
so that He dwelt among us as a man. (10.) And, says the Apos-
tle, we saw his glory, a glory which revealed Him to be the only
begotten of the Father. It is here taught that a truly divine per-
son, the eternal Word, the Creator of the world, became man,
dwelt among men, and revealed Himself to those who had eyes to
see, as the eternal Son of God. Here is the whole doctrine of the
incarnation, taught in the most explicit terms.
2. A second passage to the same effect is found in 1 John i. 1-3.
It is there taught that what was in the beginning, what was with
God, what was eternal, what was essentially life, appeared on
earth, so as to be seen, heard, looked upon, and handled. Here,
again, a divine, invisible, eternal person, is said to have assumed
our nature, a real body and a rational soul. He could be seen and
touched as well as heard. This is the main idea of this epistle.
The incarnation is declared to be the characteristic and essential
§2.] SCRIPTURAL FACTS. 385
doctrine of the gospel. " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh, is of God : and every spirit that con-
fesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God :
and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it
should come ; and even now already is it in the world."
3. In Romans i. 2-5, the Apostle says that the gospel concerns
the Son of God, who is our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as to his human
nature, kuto. o-dpKa, is the Son of David, but as to his divine nature,
Kara Tricu/i-a, is the Son of God. Here also the two natures and one
person of the Redeemer are clearly asserted. The parallel pas-
sage to this is Romans ix. 5, where Christ is said Kara a-dpKa to be
descended from the fathers, but at the same time to be God over
all and blessed forever. The same person is declared to be the
supreme God and a child of Abraham, a member of the Hebrew
nation by natural descent.
4. In 1 Timothy iii. 16, we are taught that God was " manifest in
the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." In this
passage the reading is indeed doubtful. The common text which
has 0£os has the support of almost all the cursive, and of some of
the uncial manuscripts, of several of the versions, and of many of
the Greek fathers. But whether we read 0eos or 6s, the meaning
is substantially the same. Two things are plain : first, that all the
predicates in this verse belong to one subject: and secondly, that
that subject is Christ. He, his person, is the great mystery of
Godliness. He was manifested in the flesh (z. e., in our nature) ;
He, as thus manifested, the Theanthropos, was justified, i. e., proved
to be just, i. e., to be what He claimed to be (namely, the Son of
God), by the Spirit, either by the divine nature or majesty dwell-
ing In Him, or by the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to take the
things of Christ and reveal them unto us. He, this incarnate God,
was seen, i. e., recognized and served by angels ; preached among
the Gentiles as the Son of God and Saviour of men ; believed upon
as such ; and finally received up into glory. All that the Church
teaches concerning the person of Christ, is here taught by the
Apostle.
5. No passage, however, is more full and explicit on this subject
than Philippians ii. 6-11. Of one and the same subject or person,
it is here taught, (1.) That He was God, or existed in the form of
God. The form of a thing is the mode in which it reveals itself;
and that is determined by its nature. It is not necessary to assume
that fjf-opcfii] has here, as it appears to have in some other cases, the
VOL. II. 25
386 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
sense of ^vVis; the latter is implied in the former. No one can
appear, or exist in view of otliers in the form of God, i. g., mani-
festing all divine perfections, who is not God. (2.) Hence it is
asserted that the person spoken of was equal to God. (3.) He
became a man like other men, and assumed the form of a servant,
i. e., appeared among men as a servant. (4.) He submitted to
die upon the cross. (5.) He has been exalted above all created
beings, and invested with universal and absolute authority. Christ,
therefore, of whom this passage treats, has a divine nature, and a
human nature, and is one person.
6. In Hebrews ii. 14, the same doctrine concerning the person of
Christ is clearly taught. In the first chapter of that Epistle the
Son is declared to be the brightness of the Father's glory and the
express image of his substance (^. g., of what the Father is). By
Him the worlds were made. He upholds all things by the word
of his power. He is higher than the angels, i. e., than all intelli-
gent creatures. They are bound to worship Him. They are
addressed as mere instruments ; but the Son as God. He made
the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. He is eternal
and immutable. He is associated with God in glory and dominion.
He, the person of whom all this is said in the first chapter, in the
second chapter is declared to be a man. In Him was fulfilled all
the sacred writer in the eighth Psalm had taught concerninfr the
universal dominion assigned to man. Men are declared to be his
brethren, because He and they are of one nature. As they are
partakers of flesh and blood. He also took part in the same, in
order that He might die, and by death redeem his people from all
the evils of sin.
Nothing can be plainer than that the Scriptures do teach that
Christ is truly God, that He is truly man, and that He is one per-
son. They assert of Him wdiatever ma}' be said of God, and every-
thing that can be said of a sinless man. They enter into no ex-
planations. They assume it as a certain fact that Christ is God and
man in one person, just as they assume that a man is a soul and
body in one person.
Here the subject might be left. All the ends of the spiritual
life of the believer, are answered by this simple statement of the
doctrine concerning Christ's person as it is presented in the Scrip-
tures. False explanations, however, create the necessity for a cor-
rect one. Errorists in all ages have so explained the facts recorded
concerning Christ, as either to deny the truth concerning his divine
nature, or the integrity of his human nature, or the unity of his
§3.] THE HYPOSTATICAL UNION. 387
person. Hence the Church has been constrained to teach what the
Bible doctrine involves : first, as to the nature of the union of the
two natures in Christ ; and secondly, as to the consequences of
that union.
§ 3. The Hypostatieal Union.
Two Natures in Christ.
There is a union. The elements united are the divine and hu-
man nature. By nature^ in this connection is meant substance.
In Greek the corresponding words are <^uo-is and ova-ta ; in Latin,
natura and substantia. The idea of substance is a necessary one.
We are constrained to believe that where we see tlie manifestation
of force, there is something, an objective entity which acts, and of
which such force is the manifestation. It is self-evident tliat a
non-ens cannot act. It may be well here to call to mind a few ad-
mitted principles which have already been repeatedly adverted to.
(1.) It is intuitively certain that attributes, properties, and power
or force, necessarily imply a substance of which they are manifesta-
tions. Of nothing, nothing can be predicated. That of which we
can predicate the attributes either of matter or mind, must of ne-
cessity be a reality. (2.) It is no less certain that where the attri-
butes are incompatible, the substances must be different and distinct.
That which is extended cannot be unextended. That which is
divisible cannot be indivisible. That which is incapable of thought
cannot think. That which is finite cannot be infinite. (3.) Equally
certain is it that attributes cannot exist distinct and separate from
substance. There cannot be accidentia sine suhjecto ; otherwise
there mieht be extension without anvthing; extended, and thouo-ht
without anything that thinks. (4.) Again, it is intuitively certain
that the attributes of one substance cannot be transferred to an-
other. Matter cannot be endowed with the attributes of mind ;
for then it would cease to be matter. Mind cannot be invested
with the properties of matter, for then it would cease to be mind ;
neither can humanity.be possessed of the attributes of divinity, for
then it would cease to be humanity. This is only saying that the
finite cannot be infinite. Speaking in general terms, in the whole
history of human thought, these principles have been recognized
as axiomatic ; and their denial puts an end to discussion.
If the above mentioned principles be admitted, then it follows
that in setting forth his Son as clothed in all the attributes of hu-
manity, with a body that was born of a woman, which increased
in stature, which was seen, felt, and handled ; and with a soul that
388 PART ni. Ch. m.— the person of CHRIST.
was troubled, joyful, and sorrowful, that increased in wisdom and
was ignorant of certain things, God intends and requires that we
should believe that He was a true man, — not a phantom, not an
abstraction, — not the complex of properties without the substance
of humanity, but a true or real man, like other men, yet without
sin. In like manner when He is declared to be God over all, to
be omniscient, almighty, and eternal, it is no less evident that He
has a truly divine nature ; that the substance of God in Him is the
subject in which these divine attributes inhere. This being so, we
are taught that the elements combined in the constitution of his
person, namely, humanity and divinity, are two distinct natures,
or substances. Such has been the faith of the Church universal.
In those ancient creeds which are adopted by the Greek, Latin,
and Protestant Churches, it is declared that Christ as to his hu-
manity is consubstantial with us, and as to his divinity, consubstan-
tial witli the Father. In the Council of Chalcedon, the Church
declared our Lord to be,^ Q)f.ov aX-qOw^ nal avOpwirov aXrjOwi tov avTOV
« ij/v)(rjs XoytKTJ'i Koi o-w/i,aTos, 6/xooiIo-iov tw Trarpt Kara t^v OeorrjTa Kat ofxoov-
(TLov TOV avTOV Tjijuv KttTa Tr]v avOpiDTTorrp-a.
Tliomas Aquinas says,^ " Humana natura in Christo quamvis sit
substantia particularis: qui tamen venit in unionem cujusdam com-
pleti, scilicet totius Christi, prout est Deus et homo, non potest dici
hypostasis vel suppositum : Sed ilium completum ad quod concurrit,
dicitur esse hypostasis vel suppositum." In all the creeds of the
Reformation the same doctrine is presented. In the " Augsburg
Confession"^ it is said, " Filius Dei assumpsit humanam naturam
in utero beatae Marias virginis, ut sint duse naturae, divina et hu-
mana, in unitate personae inseparabiliter conjunctae, unus Christus,
vere Deus et vere homo." " Natura (^vVts, ouo-m) in Christo est
substantia vel divinitatis vel humanitatis. Persona (vTrdorao-is,
Trpoo-wTTov) Christi est individuum ex utraque natura et divina et
humana, conjuncta, non mixta, concretum."* In the "Second
Helvetic Confession "^ it is said, "Agnoscimus in uno atque eodem
Domino nostro Jesu Christo, duas naturas (for natura, substantia
is used in other parts of the chapter), divinam et humanam
In una persona unitae vel conjunctae [sunt] : ita ut unum Christum
Dominum, non duos veneremur : unum inquam verum Deum, et
hominem, juxta divinam naturam Patri, juxta humanam vero nobis
1 Actio Quinta, Binius, Concilia Generalia, vol. ii. part 1, p. 253, e.
2 Summn, in. quaest. ii. art. 3, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 5 of fourth set.
8 III. ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 10.
* Hase's HuUtrus Redivivus, sixth edition, p. 224.
5 Cap. XI.; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, p. 484.
§3.] THE HYPOSTATICAL UNION. 389
hominibus consubstantialem, et per omnia similem, peccato ex-
cepto.'* Therefore the tlieologians teach/ " Natura divina est es-
sentia divina, qua Christus Patri et Spiritui Sancto coessentialis est.
Natura humatia est essentia seu substantia humana, qua Christus
nobis hominibus coessentialis est." Or as stated in the ancient
creeds, Christ is not aXXos koL aAXos (one person and another
person), but aAAo koI aXXo (one substance and another substanct,*).
The Two Natures are united hut not mingled or confounded.
We have seen that the first important point concerning the per-
bon of Christ is, that the elements united or combined in his person
are two distinct substances, hnmanity and divinity ; that He has
in his constitution the same essence or substance which constitutes
us men, and the same substance which makes God infinite, eternal,
and immutable in all his perfections. The second point is, that
this union is not by mixture so that a new, third substance is pro-
duced, which is neither humanity nor divinity but possessing the
properties of both. Tiiis is an impossibility, because the properties
in question are incompatible. We cannot mingle mind and mat-
ter so as to make a substance which is neither mind nor matter,
but spiritual matter, for that would be a contradiction. It would
amount to unextended extension, tangible intangibility, or visible
invisibility. Neither is it possible that the divine and human
natures should be so mingled as to result in a third, which is neither
purely human nor purely divine, but theanthropic. Christ's per-
son is theanthropic, but not his nature; for that would make the
finite infinite, and the infinite finite. Christ would be neither God
nor man ; but the Scriptures constantly declare Him to be both
God and man. In all Christian creeds therefore, it is declared that
the two natures in Christ retain each its own properties and attrib-
utes. They all teach that the natures are not confounded, " Sed
salvis potius et permanentibus naturarum proprietatibus in una
persona unitae vel conjunctae."
As therefore the human body retains all its properties as matter,
and the soul all its attributes as spirit in their union in our persons;
so humanity and divinity retain each its peculiar properties in their
union in the person of Christ. And as intelligence, sensibility, and
will are the properties of the human soul, without which it ceases
to be a soul, it follows that tiie human soul of Christ retained its
intelligence, sensibility, and will. But intelligence and will are no
less the essential properties of the divine nature, and therefore were
1 Pclanus, i>ijnla<jiii(i 'J'l,tol<'i,ue, vi. I'J, Haiiuviae, 1025, p. 362, a, b.
390 PART III. Ch. III. — the person OF CHRIST.
retained after its union with the human nature in Christ. In teach-
ing, therefore, that Christ was truly man and truly God, the
Scri])tures teach that He had a finite intelligence and will, and also
an infinite intelligence. In Him, therefore, as the Church has ever
maintained, there were and are two wills, two eVepyeiai or opera-
tions. His human intellect increased, his divine intelligence was,
and is infinite. His human will had only human power, his divine
will was, and is almighty. Mysterious and inscrutable as all this is,
it is not more so than the union of the discordant elements of mind
and matter in our own constitution.
There is no Transfer of the Attributes of one Nature to the Other.
The third j)oint in relation to the person of Christ, is that no
attribute of the one nature is transferred to the other. This is
virtually included in what has already been said. There are those,
however, who admit that the two natures in Christ are not mixed
or confounded, who yet maintain that the attributes of the one are
transferred to the other. But the pro])erties or attributes of a
substance constitute its essence, so that if they be removed or if
others of a different nature be added to them, the substance itself
is changed. If you take rationality from mind it ceases to be
mind. If you add I'ationality to matter it ceases to be matter. If
you make that extended which in itself is incapable of extension,
the identity of the thing is lost. If therefore infinity be conferred
on the finite, it ceases to be finite. If divine attributes be con-
ferred on man, he ceases to be man ; and if human attributes be
transferred to God, he ceases to be God. The Scriptures teach
that the human nature of Christ remained in its integrity after the
incarnation ; and that the divine nature remained divine. The
Bible never requires us to receive as true anything which the con-
stitution of our nature given to us by God himself, forces us to
believe to be false or impossible.
The Union is a Personal Union.
The union of the two natures in Christ is a personal or hypo-
static union. By this is meant, in the first place, that it is not a
mere indwelling of the divine nature analogous to the indwelling
of the Spirit of God in his people. Much less is it a mere moral
or sympathetic union ; or a temporary and mutable relation between
the two. In the second place, it is intended to affirm that the
union is such that Christ is but one person. As the union of the
soul and body constitutes a man one person, so the union of the
§3.J THE HYPOSTATICAL UNION. 391
Son of God with our nature constitutes Him one person. And as
in man the personaUty is in the soul and not in the body, so the
personality of Christ is in the divine nature. Both of these points
are abundantly evident from Scripture. The former, or the unity
of Christ's person, has already been proved ; and the latter is
proved by the fact that the Logos, or Son, was from all eternity a
distinct person in the Godhead. It was a divine person, not merely
a divine nature, that assumed humanity, or became incarnate.
Hence it follows that the human nature of Christ, separately con-
sidered, is impersonal. To this, indeed, it is objected that intelli-
gence and will constitute personality, and as these belong to
Christ's human nature personality cannot be denied to it. A per-
son, however, is a suppositum iritelUgens, but the human nature
of Christ is not a suppositum or subsistence. To personality both
rational substance and distinct subsistence are essential. The latter
the human nature of Christ never possessed. The Son of God did
not unite Himself with a human person, but with a human nature.
The proof of this is that Christ is but one person. The possibility
of such a union cannot rationally be denied. Realists believe that
generic humanity, although intelligent and voluntary, is impersonal,
existing personally only in individual men. Although realism may
not be a correct philosophy, the fact of its wide and long continued
prevalence may be taken as a proof that it does not involve any
palpable contradiction. Human nature, therefore, although endowed
with intelligence and will, may be, and in fact is, in the person of
Christ impersonal. That it is so is the plain doctrine of Scripture,
for the Son of God, a divine person, assumed a perfect human
nature, and, nevertheless, remains one person.
The facts, therefore, revealed in Scripture concerning Christ
constrain us to believe, (1.) That in his person two natures, the
divine and the human, are inseparably united ; and the word
nature in this connection means substance. (2.) That these two
natures or substances are not mixed or confounded so as to form a
third, which is neither the one nor the other. Each nature retains
all its own properties unchanged ; so that in Christ there is a finite
intelligence and infinite intelligence, a finite will or energy, and an
infinite will. (3.) That no property of the divine nature is trans-
ferred to the human, and much less is any property of the human
transferred to the divine. Humanity in Christ is not deified, nor
is the divinity reduced to the limitations of humanity. (4.) The
union of the natures is not mere contact or occupancy of the same
portion of space. It is not an indwelling, or a simple control of
392 PART III. Ch. in. — the person of CHRIST.
the divine nature over the operations of the human, but a personal
union ; such a union that its result is that Christ is one person with
two distinct natures forever ; at once God and man.
§ 4. Consequences of the Hypostatical Union.
Communion of Attributes.
The first and most obvious of these consequences is, the Kon/wvt'a
iStto/Aarwi/, or communion of attributes. By this is not meant that
the one nature participates in the attributes of the other, but simply
that the person is the Kotvwvos, or partaker of the attributes of both
natures ; so that whatever may be affirmed of either nature may
be affirmed of the person. As of a man can be affirmed whatever
is true of his body and whatever is true of his soul, so of Christ
may be affirmed whatever is true of his human nature and whatever
is true of his divinity ; as we can say of a man that he is mortal
and immortal ; that he is a creature of the dust and the child of
God : so we may say of Christ that He is finite and infinite ; that
He is ignorant and omniscient ; that He is less tlian God and equal
with God ; that He existed from eternity and that He was born in
time ; that He created all things and that He was a man of sorrows.
It is on this principle, that what is true of either nature is true of
the person, tliat a multitude of passages of Scripture are to be
explained. These passages are of diffi^rent kinds.
1. Those in which the predicate belongs to the whole person.
This is the most numerous class. Thus when Chi'ist is called our
Redeemer, our Lord, our King, Prophet, or Priest, our Shepherd,
etc., all these things are true of Him not as the Logos, or Son, nor
as the man Christ Jesus, but as the ©eai/^pwTros, the God-man. And
in like manner, when He is said to have been humbled, to have
given Himself for us, to be the head of the Church, to be our life,
and to be our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemp-
tion, this is true of Christ as a person. The same may be said with
regard to those passages in which He is said to be exalted above
all principalities and powers ; to sit at the right hand of God ; and
to come to judge the world.
2. There are many passages in which the person is the subject,
but the predicate is true only of the divine nature, or of the Logos.
As when our Lord said, " Before Abraham was I am ; " " The
glory which I had with thee before the foundation of the world ; "
or when it is said, " Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the
foundation of the world, and the heavens are the work of thine
hands."
§4.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE HYPOSTATICAL UNION. 393
3. Passages in which the person is the subject, but the predicate
is true only of the human nature. As when Christ said, " I thirst ; "
"My soul is sorrowful even unto death." And when we read that
" Jesus wept.'' So all those passages which speak of our Lord as
walking, eating, and sleeping ; and as being seen, touched, and
handled. Tiiere are two classes of passages under this general
head which are of special interest. First, those in which the person
is designated from the divine nature when the predicate is true only
of the human nature. " The Church of God which He purchased
with his blood." " The Lord of glor^'was crucified." "The Son
knows not the time when the final judgment is to come." (Mai'k
xiii. 32.) The forms of expression, therefore, long prevalent in the
Church, "the blood of God," "God the mighty maker died," etc.,
are in accordance with Scriptural usage. And if it be right to
say " God died," it is right to say " He was born." The person
born of the Virgin Mary was a divine person. He was the Son of
God. It is, therefore, correct to say that Mary was the mother of
God. For, as we have seen, the person of Christ is in Scripture
often designated from the divine nature, wlien the predicate is
true only of the human nature. On this particular form of expres-
sion, which, from its abuse, is generally offensive to Protestant ears,
Turrettin remarks: "Maria potest dici vere ^eoroKo? seu Mater Dei ^
Deipara, si vox Dei sumatur concrete pro toto personali Christi,
quod constat ex persona Aoyou et natura humana, quo sensu vocatur
Mater Domini Luc. i. 43, sed non precise et abstracte ratione
Deitatis." ^ The second class of passages under this head are of
the opposite kind, namely, those in w-hich the person is denominated
from the human nature when the predicate is true only of the divine
nature. Thus Christ is called the Son of man who is in heaven.
Here the denomination " Son of man " is from the human, while
the predicate (ubiquity) is true oidy of the divine nature. So our
Lord says, " What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
where He was before ?" (John vi. 62.) In Romans ix. 5, He
who was of the fathers (the seed of Abraham and son of David)
is declared to be God over all and blessed forever.
4. There is a fourth class of passages which come under the first
general head mentioned above, but have the peculiarity that the
denomination is derived from the divine nature, when the predicate
is not true of the divine nature itself, but only of the ©eai'^pwTros.
Thus it is said, " The Son also himself shall be subject to him who
put all things under him." Here the designation Son is from the
1 Locus XVIII. quaest. v. 18, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 273, 274.
39^ PART III. Ch. III. — the person OF CHRIST.
divine nature, but tlie subjection predicated is not of tbe Son as
such, or of the Logos, nor is it simply of the human nature, but offi-
cially of the God-man. So our Lord says, " The Father is greater
than L" The Father is not greater than the Son, for they are the
same in substance and equal in power and glory. It is as God-man
that He is economically subject to the Father. Perhaps tlie pas-
sage in John v. 26 may belong to this class. " As the Father hath
life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself"
This may be understood of the eternal communication of life from
the first to the second person of the Trinity (i. e., of eternal gen-
eration) ; or it may refer to the constitution of Christ's person.
And then the term Son would designate, not the Logos, but the
Tlieanthropos, and the communication of life w^ould not be from the
Father to the Son, but from God to the Theanthropos. It pleased
the Father that Christ should have a divine nature possessed of
inherent life in order that He might be the source of life to his
people.
It is instructive to notice here how easily and naturally the
sacred writers predicate of our Lord the attributes of humanity and
those of divinity, however his person may be denominated. They
call Him Lord, or Son, and attribute to Him, often in the same
sentence, what is true of Him only as God, what is true only of his
humanity, and what is true of Him only as the God-man. Thus
in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said, God hath
spoken unto us by his Son. Here Son means the incarnate Logos.
In the next clause, " By whom he made the world," what is said
is true only of the eternal Son. So also what immediately follows,
Who is " the brightness of his glory and the express image of his
person, and upholding all things (the universe) by the word of his
power." But in the next clause, " When he had by himself
(i. e., by his sacrificial death) purged away our sins," the reference
is to his human nature, as the body only died. And then it is
added, He " sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,"
which is true of the God-man.
The Acts of Christ.
The second consequence of the hypostatical union relates to the
acts of Christ. As a man is one person, and because he is one
person all his acts are the acts of that person, so all the acts of
Cin-ist are the acts of his whole person. But, as was before
remarked, the acts of a man are of three classes : such as are purely
mental, as thought ; such as belong exclusively to the body, as
§4] CONSEQUENCES OF THE HYPOSTATICAL UNION, 395
digestion and assimilation; and sucli as are mixed, i. e.,botli mental
and corporeal, as all voluntary acts, as speaking, writing, etc.
Yet all are equally the acts of the man. It is the man who thinks,
wlio digests his food, and who speaks. So of the acts of Ciirist.
Some are purely divine, as creation and preservation ; some are
purely human, as eating, drinking, and sleeping; some are thean-
tliropic, i. e., those in which both natures concur, as in the work of
redemption. Yet all these acts are the acts of Christ, of one and
the same person. It was Christ who created the world. It was
Christ who ate and drank. And It is Christ who redeems us from
the power of darkness.
Here also, as in the case of the attributes of Christ, his person
may be denominated from one nature when the act ascribed to Him
belongs to the other nature. He is called God, the Son of God,
the Lord of glory, when his delivering Himself unto death is
spoken of. And He is called man, or the Son of man, when the
acts ascribed to Him involve the exercise of divine power or author-
ity. It is the Son of man who forgives sins ; who is Lord of the
Sabbatli ; who raises the dead ; and who is to send forth his angels
to gather his elect.
Such being the Scriptural doctrine concerning the person of
Christ, it follows that although the divine nature is immutable and
impassible, and therefore neither the obedience nor the suffering
of Christ was the obedience or suffering of the divine nature, yet
they were none the less the obedience and suffering of a divine
person. The soul of man cannot be wounded or burnt, but when
the body is injured it is the man who suffers. In like manner the
obedience of Christ was the righteousness of God, and the blood of
Christ was the blood of God. It is to this fact that the infinite
merit and efficiency of his work are due. This is distinctly asserted
in the Scriptures. It is impossible, says the Apostle, that the blood
of bulls and of goats could take away sin. It was because Christ
was possessed of an eternal Spirit that He by the one offering of
Himself hath perfected forever them who are sanctified. This is
the main idea insisted upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This
is the reason given why the sacrifice of Christ need never be
repeated, and why it is infinitely more efficacious than those of the
old dispensation. This truth has been graven on the hearts of
believers in all ages. Every such believer says from his heart,
" Jesus, my God, thy blood alone has power sufficient to atone."
396 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
The Man Christ Jesus the object of Worship.
Another obvious inference from this doctrine is that the man
Christ Jesus is the object of religious worship. To worship, in the
religious sense of the word, is to ascribe divine perfections to its
object. The possession of those perfections, is, therefore, the only-
proper ground for such worship. The humanity of Christ, conse-
quently, is not the ground of worship, but it enters into the consti-
tution of that person who, being God over all and blessed forever,
is the object of adoration to saints and angels. We accordingly
find that it was He whom they saw, felt, and handled, that the
Apostles worshipped as their Lord and God ; whom they loved
supremely, and to whom they consecrated themselves as a living
sacrifice.
Christ can sympathize with his People.
A third inference which the Apostles drew from this doctrine is,
that Christ is a merciful and faithful high-priest. He is just the
Saviour we need. God as God, the eternal Logos, could neither
be nor do what our necessities demand. Much less could any mere
man, however wise, holy, or benevolent, meet the wants of our
souls. It is only a Saviour who is both God and man in two dis-
tinct natures and one person forever, who is all we need and all we
can desire. As God He is ever present, almighty and infinite in all
his resources to save and bless ; and as man, or being also a man,
He can be touched with a sense of our infirmities, was tempted as
we are, was subject to the law which we violated, and endured the
penalty which we had incurred. In Him dwells all the fulness of
the Godhead, in a bodily form, in fashion as a man, so as to be
accessible to us, and so that from his fulness we can all partake.
We are therefore complete in Him, wanting nothing.
The Incarnate Logos the Source of Life.
The Scriptures teach that the Logos is everlasting life, having
life in Himself, and the source of life, physical, intellectual, and
spiritual. They further teach that his incarnation was the neces-
sary condition of the communication of spiritual life to the children
of men. He, therefore, is the only Saviour, the only source of
life to us. We become partakers of this life, by union with Him.
This union is partly federal established in the councils of eternltv ;
partly vital by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ; and partly volun-
tary and conscious by faith. It is to those who believe, to those
who receive Him as God manifest in the flesh, that He becomes
§5.] ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 397
eternal life. For u is not they who live, but Christ who h'veth in
them. (Gal. ii. 20.) The life of the believer is not a corporate
life, conditioned on union with any outward organization, called
the Church, for whosoever calls on the name of the Lord, that is,
whosoever religiously worships Him and looks to Him as his God
and Saviour, shall be saved, whether in a dungeon or alone in a
desert.
The Exaltation of the Human Nature of Christ.
Another consequence of the hypostatical union is the exaltation
of the humanity of Christ. As the human body in virtue of its
vital union with an immortal soul, is immeasurably exalted above
any mere material organization in the universe (so far as known or
revealed), so the humanity of Christ in virtue of its union with
his divine nature is immeasurably exalted in dignity and worth,
and even power over all intelligent creatures. The human body,
however, is not now, and will not be, even when made like to
Christ's glorious body, so exalted as to cease to be material. In
like manner the humanity of Christ is not so exalted by its union
with his divine nature as. to cease to be human. This would break
the bond of sympathy between Him and us. It has been the pious
fault of some Christians that they merge his humanity in his God-
head. This is as real, if not so fatal an error, as merging his God-
head in his humanity. We must hold fast to both. " The Man
Christ Jesus," and " The God over all blessed forever," is the one
undivided inseparable object of the adoration, love, and confidence
of the people of God ; who can each say, —
" Jesus, my God, I know his name,
His name is all my trust;
Nor will He put my soul to sharae,
Nor let my hope be lost."
§ 5. Erroneous and Heretical Doctrines on the Person of Christ.
Plainly as all the truths above mentioned concerning the person
of Christ, seem now to us to be revealed in the Holy Scriptures, it
was not until after the conflict of six centuries that they came to be
fully stated so as to secure the general assent of the Church. We
must indeed always bear in mind the difference between the specu-
lations of theologians and the faith of the great body of the people
of God. It is a false assumption that the doctrines taught by the
ecclesiastical writers of a particular age, constituted the faith of
believers of that age. The doctrines of theologians are largely
determined by their antecedents and by the current philosophy of
the day in which they live. This is unavoidable. The faith of the
398 PART III. Ch. hi — the person of CHRIST.
common people is determined by the Word of God, by the worsln'p
of the sanctuary, and by the teachino;s of the Spirit. They remain
in a great measure ignorant of, or indifferent to, the speculations
of theologians. It cannot be doubted that the great body of the
people from the beginning believed that Christ was truly a man,
was truly God, and is one person. They could not read and be-
lieve the Scriptures without having these truths engraved on their
hearts. All the records of their confessions, hymns, and prayers,
prove them to have been the worshippers of Him who died for their
sins. And in this light they were regarded and described by all
contemporary heathen writers. But while the people thus rested
in these essential facts, the theologians were forced from without
and from within, to ask, How can these things be ? How can the
same person be both God and man ? How does the Godhead in
the person of Christ stand related to his humanity? It was in the
answers given to these questions that difficulty and controversy
occurred. To avoid the great and obvious difficulties connected
with the doctrine of the incarnation of God, some denied his true
divinity ; others denied the reality or completeness of his human
nature ; others so explained the nature and effects of the union as
to interfere either with the integrity of the divine or of the human
nature of Christ or with the unity of his person.
The Ehionites.
The errors which disturbed the peace of the early Church on
this, as on other subjects, arose either from Judaism or from hea-
then philosophy. The Jews who professed themselves Christians,
were not able, in many instances, as we learn from the New Testa-
ment itself, to emancipate themselves from their former opinions
and prejudices. They had by the misinterpretation of their Scrip-
tures been led to expect a Messiah who was to be the head of their
nation as David and Solomon had been. They, therefore, as a
body, rejected Christ, who came as a man of sorrows, not having
where to lay his head. And of those who were constrained by
his doctrines and miracles to acknowledge Him as the promised
Messiah, many believed Him to be a mere man, the son of Joseph
and Mary, distinguished from other men only by his holiness and
his extraordinary endowments. This was the case with the sect
known as Ebionites. Why so called is a matter of doubt. Although
as a body, and characteristically, they entertained this low, human-
itarian view of the person of Christ, yet it appears from the frag-
mentary records of the ancient writers, that they differed much
§ 5.] ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 399
among themselves, and were divided into different classes. Some
had mingled with their Jewish opinions more or less of the ele-
ments of the Gnostic philosophy. This was the more natural, as
many of the teachers of Gnosticism were Jews. The fathers,
therefore, speak both of Jewish, and of Gnostic Ebionites. So far
as their views of Christ's person were modified by Gnosticism, they
ceased to be distinctly the views of the Ebionites as a body.
Another class of nominal Jewish Christians is known as Naza-
renes. They differed but little from the Jewash Ebionites. Both
insisted on the continued obligation of the Mosaic law, and both
regarded Christ as a mere man. But the Nazarenes acknowledged
his miraculous conception, and thus elevated Him above all other
men, and regarded Him as the Son of God in a peculiar sense.
The acknowledgment of the divinity of Christ, and the ability and
willingness to unite in worship of which He was the object, was
from the beginning the one indispensable condition of Christian
fellowship. These Jewish sects, therefore, who denied his divinity,
existed outside of the Church, and were not recognized as Chris-
tians.
The G^nostics.
As the Ebionites denied the divinity, so the Gnostics in different
ways denied his humanity. They were led to this denial by their
views of the origin of evil. God is the source only of good. As
evil exists it must have its origin not only outside of Him, but inde-
pendently of Him. He is, however, the source of all spiritual
existences. By emanation from his substance spiritual beings are
produced ; from them other emanations proceed, and from those
still others in ever increasing; deterioration according to their dis-
tance from the primal fountain. Evil arises from matter. The
world was created, not by God, but by an inferior spirit, the Demi-
ourgos, whom some sects of the Gnostics regarded as the God of
the Jews. Man consists of a spirit derived from God combined
with a material body and an animal soul. By this union of the
spiritual with the material, the spirit is defiled and enslaved. Its
redemption consists in its emancipation from the body, so as to
enable it to reenter the sphere of pure spirits, or to be lost in God.
To effect this redemption, Christ, one of the highest emanations
from God (or -^ons), came into the world. It was necessary
that He should appear " in fashion as a man," but it was impossible
He should become a man, without subjecting Himself to the pollu-
tion and bondage from wliicli He came to deliver men. To meet
this difficulty various theories were adopted. Some held that Christ
400 PART m. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
had no real body or human soul. His earthly manifestation in
human form was a phantasm, a mere appearance without substance
or reality. Hence they were called Docetse, from the Greek verb
SoKco), which means to appear, to seem to he. According to this
class of the Gnostics, Christ's wliole earthly life was an illusion.
He was not born, nor did he suffer or die. Others admitted that
he had a real body, but denied that it was material. They taught
that it was formed of some ethereal or celestial substance, and
brought by Christ into the world. Although born of the virgin
Mary, it was not of her substance, but only through her as the
mould in which this ethereal substance was cast. Hence in the
ancient creeds it is said that Christ was born, not jt»gr, but ex Maria
virgine, which is explained to mean ex substantia matris suce. It
was also in opposition to this Gnostic heresy tliat the ancient creeds
emphasized the declaration that Christ, as to his human nature, is
consubstantial with us. Others, as the Cerinthians, lield that Jesus
and Christ were distinct. Jesus was an ordinary man, the son of
Joseph and Mary. Christ was a spirit or power which descended
on Jesus at his baptism, and became his guide and guardian, and
enabled Him to work miracles. At the time of his passion, the
Christ departed, returning into heaven, leaving the man Jesus to
suffer alone. As nothing is more distinctly revealed in Scripture,
and nothing is more essential to Christ's being the Saviour of men,
than that he should be truly a man, all these Gnostic theories were
rejected as heretical.
The ApolUnarian Doctrine.
As the Gnostic doctrine which denied entirely the human nature
of Christ was rejected, the next attempt was directed against the in-
tegrity of that nature. Many of the early fathers, especially of the
Alexandrian school, had presented views of this element of Christ's
person, which removed Him more or less from the class of ordi-
nary men. They nevertheless maintained that He was truly a
man. The Apollinarians, so called from Apollinaris, a distinguished
bishop of Laodicea, adopting the Platonic distinction between the
croiiJ.a, xpvxq and TTi^ev/xa, as three distinct subjects or principles in the
constitution of man, admitted that Christ had a true body (o-w/y-a)
and animal soul Qlivyyf), but not a rational spirit, or mind (jvivixa
or vov<i). In Him the eternal Son, or Logos, supplied the place of
the human intelligence. The Apollinarians were led to the adop-
tion of this theory partly from the difficulty of conceiving how two
complete natures can be united in one life and consciousness. If
§ 5.] ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 401
Christ be God, or the divine Logos, He must have an infinite
intelligence and an almighty will. If a perfect man. He must have
a finite intelligence and a human will. How then can He be one
person ? This is indeed incomprehensible ; but it involves no con-
tradiction. Apollinaris admitted that the ipvxrj and Trvev/xa in ordi-
nary men, although two distinct principles, are united in one life
and consciousness. The i/'^x^ has its own life and intelligence, and
so has the Trvetj/^a, and yet the two are one. But a second and
strong inducement to adopting the Apollinarian theory, was the
doctrine then held, by many, at least, of the Platonizing fath.ers,
that reason in man is part of the divine Logos or universal reason.
So that the difference between man and God, so far as man's intel-
ligence is concerned, is merely quantitive. If this be so, it is in-
deed difficult to conceive how there should be in Christ both a part
of the Logos and the entire Logos. The part would be necessarily
superseded by the whole, or comprehended in it. But notwith-
standing the force of this ad hominem argument as directed against
some of his opponents, the conviction of the Church was so strong
that Christ was a perfect man, possessing within Himself all the ele-
ments of our nature, that the Apollinarian doctrine was condemned
in the general council held in Constantinople, a. d. 381, and soon
disappeared.
Nestorianism.
The integrity of the two natures in Christ having been thus as-
serted and declared to be the faith of the Church, the next ques-
tion which arose concerned the relations of the two natures, the
one to the other, in the one person of Christ. Nestorianism is the
designation adopted in church history, for the doctrine which
either affii-ms, or implies a twofold personality in our Lord. The
divine Logos was represented as dwelling in the man Christ Jesus,
so that the union between the two natures was somewhat analogous
to the indwelling of the Spirit. The true divinity of Christ was
thus endangered. He was distinguished from other men in whom
God dwelt, only by the plenitude of the divine presence, and the
absolute control of the divine over the human. This was not the
avowed or real doctrine of Nestorius, but it was the doctrine
charged upon him, and was the conclusion to which his principles
were supposed to lead. Nestorius was a man of great excellence
and eminence ; first a presbyter in Antioch, and afterwards
Patriarch of Constantinople. The controversy on this subject
arose from his defending one of his presbyters who denied that the
Virgin Mary could properly be called the Mother of God. As
VOL. II. 26
402 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
this designation of the blessed Virgin had ah'eady received the
sanction of the Church, and was familiar and dear to the people,
Nestorius's objection to its use excited general and violent opposi-
tion. He was on this account alone accused of heresy. As, how-
ever, there is a sense in which Mary was the Mother of God, and
a sense in which such a designation is blasphemous, everything
depends on the real meaning attached to the terms. What Nesto-
rius meant, according to his own statement, was simply that God,
the divine nature, could nefther be born nor die. In his third let-
ter to Coelestin, Bishop of Rome, he said, " Ego autem ad banc
quidem vocem, quae est ^cotokos, nisi secundum Apollinaris et Arii
furorem ad confusionem naturarum proferatur, volentibus dicere
non resisto ; nee tamen ambigo quia haec vox OeoTOKa illi voci cedat,
quae est xpio"''0''"OKos, tanquam prolataj ab Angelis et evangelistis."
What he asserted was, "Non peperit creatura creatorem, sed
peperit hominem deitatis instrumentum Spiritus sanctus
. . . Deo Verbo templum fabricatus est, quod habitaret, ex vir-
gine." Nevertheless, he obviously carried the distinction of na-
tures too far, for neither he nor his followers could bring them-
selves to use the Scriptural language, " The Church of God whidi
he purchased with his blood." The Syriac version used by the
Nestorians, reads Xpto-ros instead of ©eos in Acts xx. 28. The
principal opponent of Nestorius was Cyril of Alexandria, who
secured his condemnation by violent means in the Synod of Ephe-
sus in A. D. 431. This irregular decision was resisted by the
Greek and Syrian bishops, so that the controversy, for a time at
least, was a conflict between these two sections of the Church.
Ultimately Nestorius was deposed and banished, and died a. d.
440. His followers removed eastward to Persia, and organized
themselves into a separate communion, which continues until this
day.
Uiift/ehiamsm.
As Nestorius so divided the two natures in Christ as almost to
necessitate the assumption of two persons, his opponents were led
to the opposite extreme. Instead of two, they insisted that there
was but one nature in Christ. Cyril himself had taught what
clearly implied this idea. According to Cyril there is but one
nature in Christ because by the incarnation, or hypostatlcal union,
the human was changed into the divine.^ With the extreme Alex-
andrian theologians, the humanity of Christ was ignored. It was
the Logos who was born, the Logos who suffered and died. All
1 See Dorner, Hagenbach, and Munscher, on this controversy.
§ 5.] ERRONEOUS VIEAVS OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 403
about Christ was divine, even his body.^ The opjDosition between
the Syrian and Egyptian bishops (Antioch and Alexandria) be-
came so pronounced, that any distinction of natures in Christ was
by the latter denounced as Nestorianism. It was Eutyches, how-
ever, a presbyter of Constantinople, one of the most strenuous ad-
vocates of the views of Cyril and an opponent of Nestorius, who
became the representative of this doctrine which has since gone by
his name. He was accused of heresy on this account, and con-
demned in a Council called by the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Eutyches admitted that before the incarnation there were two
natures, but afterwards only one. '0/ioXoyw eV 8vo <f)vcr€uiv yeyewrjo-Oat
Tov Kvpiov TjfxCiV irpo rrj^ ivwcreCys, /uera 8c rrjv kvwcnv, jxiav (jtvaiv 6/xoAoyw.
But what was that nature which resulted from the union of the
two ? The human might be exalted into the divine, or lost in it,
as a drop of vinegar (to use one of the illustrations then em-
ployed) in the ocean. Then Christ ceased to be a man. And as
the union of the two natures commenced from the beginning, the
whole of Christ's human earthly life became an illusion, or empty
show. Where then are his redeeming work, and his bond of
union or sympathy with us ? Or the effect of the union might be
to merge the divine into the human, so that the one nature was
after all only the nature of man. Then the true divinity of Christ
was denied, and we have only a human saviour. Or the effect of
the union of the two natures was the production of a third, which
was neither human nor divine, but theanthropic, as in chemical
combinations an acid and an alkali when united, produce a sub-
stance which is no longer either acid or alkaline. Then Christ
instead of being God and man, is neither God nor man. This
being contrary to the Scriptures, and placing Christ out of the
range of human sympathies, was opposed to the intimate convic-
tions of the Church.
The condemnation of Eut^^ches at Constantinople greatly in-
censed Dioscurus, bishop of Alexandria, and his associates.
Through his influence a general synod was convened at Ephesus
in 449 A. D., from which the opposers of Eutyches were forcibly
excluded, and his doctrine of one nature in Christ formally sanc-
tioned. The Council proceeded to exconmiunicate those who
taught a contrary doctrine, and Eutyches was restored to office.
The doctrines of the Council (known in history as " the robber
council") were sanctioned by the emperor Theodosius. But as
he died in the following year, his successor being hostile to Dios-
1 Neander, Dvgmengeschichte, vol. i. p. 349.
404 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST. .
curus, summoned another general synod, which met at Chalcedon,
A. D. 451. Here Dioscurus was deposed, and the letter of Leo of
Rome to Flavian of Constantinople was adopted as a true exposi-
tion of the faith of the Church. Agreeably to the distinctions
contained in that letter the Council framed its confession, in which
it is said,^ " We teach that Jesus Christ is perfect as respects God-
head, and perfect as respects manhood ; that He is truly God, and
truly a man consisting of a rational soul and a body ; that He is
consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity, and consubstan-
tial with us as to his humanity, and like us in all respects, sin
excepted. He was begotten of the Father before creation (n-po
aiwvcuv) as to his deity ; but in these last days He, for us, and
for our salvation, was born of Mary the Virgin, the mother of
God as to his humanity. He is one and the same Christ, Lord,
only begotten, existing in two natures without mixture, without
change, without division, without separation ; the diversity of the
two natures not being at all destroyed by their union in the one
person, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being pre-
served, and concurring to one person, and one subsistence." This
was one of the six general Councils in whose doctrinal decisions all
Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, professed their agree-
ment. The Latin Church received this confession of the Council
of Chalcedon cheerfully, but it met with great opposition in some
parts, and especially in Palestine and Egypt, and tlierefoi'e did not
bring the controversy on this subject to an end. This conflict re-
sulted in great disorders and bloodshed in Palestine and Egypt, and
in Constantinople even in revolution ; one Emperor was deposed,
and another enthroned. After nearly two centuries of controversy,
the Emperor Heraclius endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by
getting both parties to admit that there are two natures in Christ,
but only one will and operation, jxia OeavSpLK-rj ivepyeia. This effort
was so far successful that a portion of the Monophysites assented
to this modification of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon ; but
the more determined of that party and the great body of tiie ortho-
dox refused. The controversy turned after this specially on the
question whether thei'e is one only, or two wills in Christ. If only
one, then, as the orthodox asserted, there could be but one nature,
for will is one of the essential elements or faculties of a rational
nature. To deny Christ a human will, was to deny that He had a
human nature, or was truly a man. Besides, it precluded the pos-
sibility of his having been tempted, and therefore contradicted the
1 Acta Quinta, Binius, Concilia Generalia, vol. ii. part i. p. 253, e. f.
§ 6.] DOCTRINE OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES. 405
Scriptures, and separated Him so far from his people that He could
not sympathize with them in their temptations. The effort of
Heraclius therefore proved abortive, and the controversy continued
with unabated acrimony, until finally the sixth general council held
at Constantinople, a. d. 681, authoritatively decided in favour of
the doctrine that in the one person of Christ, as there are two dis-
tinct natures, human and divine, there are of necessity two intelli-
gences and two wills, the one fallible and finite, the other immuta-
ble and infinite. Christ was tempted, and there was, therefore, the
metaphysical possibility that He should have yielded. According
to this Council the person of Christ was not only formed,^ (k Svo
<f>v(T€(ji)v, but consists since the hypostatic union cf Svo (^uo-eo-t, and it
says in the name of the Church that there are Suo <fivcTiKa<; ^cA-T/o-eis
T/TOt OekrjjxaTa iv auro), koi 8vo ^vcrtKas evcpyctas dStatp€Ta)S, drpeTrTO)?,
d/xepicTTO)?, dcruy^wTws Kara Tr]V twv dytwv Trarepuiv SiSaaKaXuav wcraurws
KrjpvTTOjjiev. The Monothelites being thus condemned were perse-
cuted and driven eastward, where they have perpetuated them-
selves in the sect of the Maronites.
With this council the conflict on this doctrine so far ceased that
there has since been no further modification of the Church doctrine.
The decision against Nestorius, in which the unity of Christ's pei'son
was asserted; that against Eutyches, affirming the distinction of
natures ; and that against the Monothelites, declaring that the
possession of a human nature involves of necessity the possession
of a human will, have been received as the true faith by the Church
universal, the Greek, Latin, and Protestant.
During the Middle Ages, although the person of Christ Avas the
subject of diverse speculations on the part of individual writers,
there was no open or organized opposition to the decisions of the
above named councils.
§ 6. Doctrine of the Reformed Churches.
At the time of the Reformation the Reformed adhered strictly
to the doctrine of the early Church. This is apparent from the
different Confessions adopted by the several Reformed bodies,
especially from the Second Helvetic Confession, which, as will be
seen, reviews and rejects all the ancient heresies on this subject,
and repeats and adopts the language of the ancient creeds. In this
Confession it is said : ^ " Credimus praeterea et docemus filium Dei
Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum ab seterno proedestinatum vel
1 Binius, Concilia Generalia, Cologne, 1618, vol. iii. part i. sect. i. pp. 2-30, 231.
2 XI.; Niemeyer, CoUectin Confessionum, pp. 48.3-485.
406 PART III. Ch. Ill — the person OF CHRIST.
priBordlnatum esse, a Patre, salvatorem mundi : credimusque hunc
esse genitum, non tantum, cum ex virgine Maria carnem assumsit,
nee tantum ante jacta fundamenta mundi, sed ante omnem aeterni-
tatem, et quideni, a Patre, inefFabiliter Proinde Filius est
Patri juxta divinitatem cojequalis et consubstantialis, Deus verus,
non nuiicupatione, aut adoptione, aut ulla dignatione, sed substantia
atque natura Abominamur ergo Arii et omnium Ariano-
rum impiam contra filium Dei doctrinam Eundem quoque
jfiterni Dei feternum filium credimus et docemus hominis factum
esse filium, ex semine Abrahte atque Davidis, non ex viri coitu,
quod Hebion dixit, sed conceptum purissime ex Spiritu Sancto, et
natum ex Maria semper virgine : . . . . Caro ergo Christi, nee
phantastica fuit, nee coelitus allata, sicuti Valentinus et Martion
somniabant. Prceterea anima fuit Domino nostro non absque sensu
et ratione, ut Apollinaris sentiebat, neque caro absque anima, ut
Eunomius docebat, sed anima cum ratione sua, et caro cum sensi-
bus suis, per quos sensus, veros dolores tempore passionis suas
sustinuit Agnoscimus ergo in uno atque eodem Domino
nostro Jesu Christo, duas naturas [vel substantias, as it is in sev-
eral editions], divinam et humanam : et has ita dicimus conjunctas
et unitas esse, ut absorptse, aut confusae, aut immixtae non sint :
sed salvis potius et permanentibus naturarum proprietatibus, in una
persona, unitas et conjunctae: ita ut unum Christum Dominum, non
duos veneremur: unum inquam verum' Deum et hominem, juxta
divinam naturam Patri, juxta humanam vero nobis homiiiibus con-
substantialem, et per omnia similem, peccato excepto. Etenim, ut
Nestorianum dogma ex uno Christo duos faciens, et unionem per-
sonae dissolvens, abominamur : ita Eutychetis et Monothelitarum vel
Monophysicorum vesaniam, expungentem naturse humanae proprie-
tatem execramur penitus. Ergo minime docemus naturam in Christo
divinam passam esse, aut Christum secundum humanam naturam
adhuc esse in hoc mundo, adeoque esse ubique. Neque enim vel
sentimus, vel docemus veritatem corporis Christi a clarificatione
desiisse, aut deificatam, adeoque sic deificatam esse, ut suas proprie-
tates, quoad coi'pus et animam, deposuerit, ac prorsus in naturam
divinam abierat, unaque duntaxat substantia esse coeperit
Prjfiterea credimus Domiimm nostrum Jesum Christum, vere passum
et mortuum esse pro nobis Interim non negamus et Dom-
inum gloriae, juxta verba Pauli, crucifixum esse pro nobis. Nam
communicationem idiomatum, ex scripturis petitam, et ab universa
vetustate in explicandis componendisque scripturarum locis in spe-
cieni ])ugnantibus usurpatam, religiose et reverenter recipimus et
usurpamus."
§ 7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 407
It thus appears that the Reformed distinctly rejected all the
errors concerning the person of Christ, condemned in the early
Church ; the Arian, the Ebionitic, the Gnostic, the Apollinarian,
the Nestorian, the Eutychian, and the Monotlielite, as well as the
peculiar Lutheran doctrine introduced at the time of the Reforma-
tion. The Reformed taught what the fii'st six general councils
taught, and what the Cimrch universal received, — neither more
nor less. With this agrees the beautifully clear and precise state-
ment of the Westminster Confession : " Tiie Son of God, the second
person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance,
and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come,
take upon Him man's nature, and and all the essential properties
and common infirmities thei'eof, yet witliout sin : being conceived
by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Marv,
of her substance. So tliat two whole, perfect, and distinct natures,
the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together
in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.
Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only
mediator between God and man." ^
§ 7. Lutheran Doctrine.
The Lutherans in their symbols adopt all the doctrinal decisions
of the early Church respecting the person of Christ. They there-
fore hold, (1.) That Christ is very God and very man. (2.) That
He has two distinct natures, a human and divine ; that as to the
latter He is consubstantial with the Father, and as to the former
He is consubstantial with men. (3.) That He is one person.
There is one Clu'ist and not two. (4.) That the two natures are
intimately united, but without confusion or change. Each nature
retains its own peculiar properties. Nevertheless they hold that
the attributes of the one nature were communicated to the other.
They admit a " communio idiomatum " in the sense that what-
ever is true of either nature is true of the person. But beyond
this they insist upon a " communicatio naturarum." And by na-
ture, in this connection, they mean essence. Li their symbols and
writings the formula " natura, seu substantia, seu essentia " is of
frequent occurrence. The divine essence is commvmicated to the
human. The one interpenetrates the other. They " are mixed "
(commiscentur^. They do not become one essence, but remain
two ; yet where the one is the other is ; what the one does the
other does. The human is as truly divine as the eternal essence
1 Chap. viii. § 2.
408 PART in. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
of the Godhead, except that it is not divine ex se, but by commu-
nication. (5.) As however it would be derogatory to the divine
nature to suppose it to be subject to the hmitations and infirmities
of humanity, this communication of attributes is said to be confined
to the human nature. It receives divine perfections; but the divine
receives nothing from the human. (6.) The human nature of
Christ, therefore, is almighty, omniscient, and everywhere present
both as to soul and body. (7.) As this transfer of divine attributes
from the divine to the human nature is the consequence of the
incarnation, or rather constitutes it, it began when the incarnation
began, and consequently in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
(8.) The humiliation of Christ consisted mainly in the hiding or
not using the divine perfections of his human nature while here on
earth ; and his exaltation in the manifestation of the divine glory
of his humanity. On this subject the " Form of Concord " ^ says,
" Eamque Majestatem, ratione unionis personalis, semper Christus
habuit: sed in statu suse humiliationis sese exinanivit; qua de causa
revera aetate, sapientia et gratia apud Deum atque homines profe-
cit. Quare majestatem illam non semper, sed quoties ipsi visum
fuit, exseruit, donee formam servi, non autem naturam humanam,
post resurrectionem plene et prorsus deponeret, ut in plenariam
usurpationem, manifestationem et declarationem divinae majesta-
tis collocaretur, et hoc modo in gloriam suam ingrederetur."
(9.) Nevertheless Christ while here on earth, and even when in
the womb of the Virgin, was as to his soul and body everywhere
present.
The above statement is believed to be a correct exhibition of the
doctrine of the Lutheran Church as presented in the eighth chapter
of the " Form of Concord." There is, however, no little difficulty
in determining what the Lutheran doctrine really is. The Chris-
tology of Luther, although very clear and pronounced on certain
points, was indefinite and doubtful in others. His successors dif-
fered seriously among themselves. It was one of the principal
objects of the " Form of Concord " to settle the matters in
dispute. This was done by compromise. Both parties made
concessions, and yet both insisted upon the assertion of their
peculiar views in one part or other of that document. It is, there-
fore, difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile some portions of the
" Form of Concord " with others. It did not in fact put an end
to the divisions which it was designed to heal.
1 VIII. 16 ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 608.
§ 7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 409
Different Views among the IJutherans.
The principal points of difference among the Lutheran divines
concerning the person of Christ were the following: The nature
and effects of the union of natures in Christ ; the ground of that
union ; and the time of its occurrence. The Reformed Church
in adhering to the doctrine as it liad been settled in the Council of
Chalcedon, maintained that there is such an essential difference
between the divine and human natures that the one could not
become tlie other, and that the one was not capable of receiving
the attributes of the other. If God became the subject of the lim-
itations of humanity He would cease to be God ; and if man
received the attributes of God he would cease to be man. This
was regarded as a self-evident truth. The " communion of
attributes " which the Reformed, in accordance with the common
faith of the Church, admitted, concerned only the person and not
the natures of Christ. Christ possessed all the attributes of human-
ity and of divinity, but the two natures remained distinct ; just as
a man is the subject of all that can be predicated of his body and
of his soial, although the attributes of the one are not predicable of
the otlier. The Lutherans maintained that, according to this view,
the two natures were as separate as duo asseres agglutinatos.
This they pronounced to be no real incarnation. The Reformed
acknowledged that Jesus Christ the son of the Virgin Mary is a
divine person, but denied that his human nature was divine. The
Lutherans maintained that man became God, and that the human
did become divine. Otherwise, Ciirist as clothed in our nature,
could not be an object of divine worship. As though we could not
reverence a man unless we believed that the attributes of his mind
were transferred to his body.
Althoucrh the Lutheran theolofjians agree as to the fact that the
man Christ Jesus became God, they differ as to the mode in which
this was accomplished. Their language as to the fact is as strong
as it can be made. Thus Brentius, the friend of Luther and the
Reformer of Wiirtemberg, in his work " De Personali Unione,"
says. If the Logos " did not intend to remain either personali}' or
with his nature outside of Christ, but purposed to become man. He
must needs exalt the humanity into his own majesty. Therein, in
fact, consists the incarnation, that the man Christ not merely never
existed or worked without the Logos, but also that the Logos never
existed or worked without the man, whom He had assumed ; and
as this was only possible through the elevation of the humanity to
410 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
equal dignity with the Logos, the incarnation consists precisely in
this elevation, — the one is identical with the other." ^ " Accord-
ing to the philosophy of Zwingli, there is no proportion between
the finite and the infinite ; hut in the philosophy of God, finite
humanity also may become infinite." '^ The human nature of
Christ, therefore, possesses all divine attributes. It fills heaven and
earth. It is omniscient and almighty. In the "Form of Concord"^
it is said, " Itaque non tantum ut Deus, verum etiam ut homo,
omnia novit, omnia potest, omnibus creaturis pr^esens est, et omnia,
quae in coelis, in terris et sub terra sunt, sub pedibus suis et in manu
sua habet." And again,* " Non in Christo sunt duae separatae
personae, sed unica tantum est persona. Ubicunque ea est, ibi est
unica tantum et indivisa persona. Et ubicunque recte dixeris :
hie est Deus, ibi fateri oportet, et dicere, ergo etiam Christus homo
adest." This beinff the case, it beino; admitted that man becomes
God, that the human becomes divine, the finite infinite, the question
arises. How can this be ? How is divinity thus communicated to
humanity ? It is in the answer to these questions that the diversi-
ties and inconsistencies in the views not only of theologians but also
of the symbolical books, appear. It was a principle with the
Wittenbei'g school of the Lutheran theologians that human nature
is not capable of divinity. This is true also of Chemnitz, the great-
est of the divines of the age after tiie Reformation. In his work
" De Duabus Naturis in Christo, de Hypostatica Earum Unione,
de Communicatione Idiomatum," etc., says Dorner, "he controverts
in the most vigorous manner, a ' physica, naturalis communicatio,'
or ' transfusio idiomatum ; ' and no less earnestly does he deny
the 'capacitas' of a ' natura finita' for the 'infinitum,' if it signify-
more than that the divine can dwell and work in man." ^ As to
the ubiquity of Christ's body, the dissent was still more decided.^
Yet this idea of the capacity of human nature for divinity became
1 History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, by Dr. J. A. Dorner.
Translated by Rev. D. W. Simon. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark. 1862. Division ii. vol.
ii. p. 180. '^ Ibid. p. 183.
3 VIII 16; Hase, Lihri SymboUci, p. 608.
4 VIII. 82; Ibid. p. 784.
fi Dorner, Div. ii. vol. ii. p. 200.
6 On this point Dorner, on page 240, note, says, " Selnekker designates the ' Ubiquitas
absoluta tigmentum Sathanai' (Chemnitz, a ' monstnim ' and ' portentum'), and j-et sub-
scribed the Bergian formula which included Luther's words, — ' omnia in universum plena
esse Christi etiam juxta humanain naturam,' — wliich repeatedly says, Whoso believeth not
that where the Logos is there also is the humanity of Christ, divideth the person; and
which assumes Luther's doctrine of the three modes of existence of the body of Christ, —
that also according to which ' Christi corpus repletive, absolute ut Deus, in omnibus crea-
turis sit.' "
§ 7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 411
the formative idea in the Lutheran doctrine of the person of
Christ.
"No less diversity appears in the answer to the question, What is
meant by the communication of natures ? Sometimes it is said to
be a communication of the essence of God to the human nature of
Christ; sometimes a communication of divine attributes; and
sometimes it is said to mean nothing more than that the human is
made tlie organ of the divine.^ The first has symbohcal authority
in its favour, and is the most consistent with the theory. It is the
proper meaning of tlie words, for as natura in the " Form of
Concord " is constantly in this connection explained by the words
substantia and essentia, a communication of nature is a communi-
cation of essence. The one is not changed into the other, but they
are intermingled and mixed without beinoj confounded.^
The favorite illustration of this union of two natures was de-
rived from heated iron. In that case (according to the theory
of heat then in vogue) two substances are united. The one inter-
penetrates the other. Tlie iron receives the attributes of the
caloric. It glows and burns. Where the iron is, there the caloric
is. Yet the one is not changed into the other. The iron remains
iron, and the heat remains heat. This is very ingenious ; but, as is
often the case, the analogy fails in the very point to be illustrated.
The fact to be explained is how man becomes God and God man ;
how the human becomes divine, and the finite becomes infinite.
In the illustration the heat does not become iron nor the iron heat.
The only relation between the two is juxtaposition in space. But
1 Dorner says of Chemnitz, " In his highest Christological utterances, the Son of man is
nothing more than a God -moved organ: — a representation to which even the Wittenbergers
objected." Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 203, nole.
2 The Form of Concord (viii. 17-19 ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 765) says, " Catholica Christi
ecclesia semper, omnibusque temponbus simplicissime credidit et sensit, humanam et divinam
naturam in persona Christi eo modo unitas esse, ut veram inter se communicationem habeant.
Neque tamen ideo naturje in unam essentiam, sed ut D. Lutherus loquitur, in unam per-
sonam conveniunt et commiscentur. Et propter banc hypostaticam unionem et communi-
cationem veteres orthodoxi ecclestse doutores ssepe admodum, non modo ante, verum etiam
post, Chalcedonense concilium, vocabulo (mixtionis), in pia tamen sententia et vero discrim-
ine, usi sunt Et quidem erudita antiquitas unionem hypostaticam et naturarum
communicationem similitudine animie et corporis, item ferri candentis, aliquo modo decla-
ravit. Anima enim et corpus {quemadmodum etiam ignis et ferrum) non tantum per
phrasin aut modum loquendi, aut verbaliter, sed vere et realiter communicationem inter se
habent: neque tamen hoc modo confusio aut naturarum exaaquatio introducitur, qualis
fieri solet, cum ex melle et aqua mulsum conficitur; talis enim potus non amplius aut aqua
est mera, aut mel merum sed niixtus quidam ex utroque potus. Longe certe aliter se res
in ilia divinie et huraanae uaturaj unione (in persona Christi) habent: longe enim sublimior
est, et plane ineffabilis communicatio et unio divinae et humanse naturae, in persona Christi,
propter quam unionem et communicationem Deus homo est, et homo Deus. Nee tameu
hac unione et communicatione naturarum vel ipsas naturae, vel haruni proprietates coufun-
duntur: sed utraque natura essentiam et proprietates suas retinet."
412 PART III. Ch. in. — the person of CHRIST.
in the doctrine the human does become divine ; man does become
God.
A second and minor point of difference was that some referred
the communion of the attributes of the two natures to the hypo-
statical union, while others held that that union was the result of
the communication of the divine nature to the human.
The main difficulty, however, and the principal source of diver-
sity related to the time and manner of the union of the two natures.
We have already seen that one party held that this union took
place at the moment of the " miraculous conception." The con-
ception was the ascension. As the union of the divine with the
human nature rendered the human divine, it became instanter
omnipresent, almighty, and infinitely exalted. The effect of the
incarnation was that the Aoyos no longer existed extra carnem,
neither was the earo extra \6yov. Whatever the one is the other
is ; whatever the one knows the other knows ; whatever the one
does the other does ; and whatever majesty, glory, or blessedness
the one has the other also has. " So certainly as the act of incar-
nation communicates the divine essence to humanity, even so cer-
tainly must this actual omnipresence, and not merely its potence,
which does not exist, be communicated to the flesh of Christ." ^
The " Form of Concord " teaches the same doctrine ; ^ it says,
" Ex eodem etiam fundamento credimus, docemus et confitemur,
Filium hominis ad dexteram omnlpotentis majestatis et virtutis
Dei, realiter, hoc est, vere et reipsa, secundum humanam suam
naturam, esse exaltatum, cum homo ille In Deum assumptus fuerit,
quamprlmum In utero matris a Splritu Sancto est confectus, ejus-
que humanltas jam tum cum Filio Dei altlssimi personallter fuerit
unita." This, however, supposes the whole earthly life of Christ
to be an illusion. There could be no growth or development of
his human nature. He was omniscient and omnipotent when an
unborn infant. The Bible says He Increased In knowledge ; this
theory says that He knew all things from the beginning ; that He
was the ruler of the universe cooperating in all the activity of the
Logos when in the womb of the Virgin ; that He was supremely
blessed as to his human nature when in the garden and upon the
cross ; and that as to soul and body He was living while lying in
the grave. If this be so He never suffered or died, and there has
been no redemption through his blood.
1 Dorner, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 284. Dorner makes the remark quoted in the text, in special
reference to the doctrine of the Tiibingen divines. It applies, however, to every form of the
Lutheran theorj".
2 VIII. X.; Hase, Lihri SijmboUci, p. 608.
§ 7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 413
To avoid these fatal consequences of their theory, the Lutherans
were driven to different and conflicting subtle explanations. Ac-
cording to some there was no actual communication of the divine
essence and attributes to the human nature until after his resurrec-
tion. The Logos was in Him only potentially. There was on the
part of the divine nature a retractio, or -fjavxa-C^i-i', or quiescence, so
that it was as though it were not there. According to others,
there was a voluntary Kpyxpis or veiHng of itself or of its divine
gloiy on the part of the humanity of Christ. According to others,
this humiliation was rather the act of the Godman, who only occa-
sionally revealed the fact that the human nature was divine. No
explanation could meet the difficulties of the case, because they are
inseparable from the assumption that the human nature of Christ
was replete with divine attributes from the moment of its miracu-
lous conception. It is a contradiction to say that the same indi-
vidual mind was omniscient and yet was ignorant and increased
in knowledge ; tliat the same rational soul was supremely happy
and exceeding sorrowful, at the same time ; that the same body
was potentially alive and yet actually dead. From the nature of
the case there can be no difference between the Kr^cns and XPW'-^ of
such divine attributes as omniscience and omnipresence. It would
require a volume to give the details of the controversies between
the different schools of the Lutheran divines on these and kindred
points. This general outline is all that can here be expected.^
Remarks on the Lutheran Doctrine.
1. The first remark which suggests itself on this Lutheran doc-
trine is its contrast with the simplicity of the gospel. The New
Testament predicates of our Lord Jesus Christ all that can be
predicated of a sinless man, and all that can be predicated of a
divine person. It is only stating this fact in another form to sav
that the Bible teaches that the eternal Son of God became man by
taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was,
1 These details may be found at length in the larger work of Dorner on the Person of
Christ, already frequently referred to, and in the work entitled Christi Person unci Werk ;
Darstellung der evangeUsch-lutheri$chen Dogmnlik vom Mittelpunkte der Chrhtoloyie aus.
Von G. Thomasius D. und ord. Professor der Theologie an der Universitat Erlangen. In
two volumes, 1853, and 1857.
See also The Consei-vative Reforviation and its Theology, as represented in the Augsburg
Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. By
Charles P. Krauth, D. D., Norton Professor of Theology in the Kvangelical Lutheran The-
ological Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of
Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1871, 8vo, pp. 840. This is a very
able and instructive book, and presents the Lutheran doctrine in the most plausible form
of which it admits.
414 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
and continues to be, God and man, in two entire distinct natures,
and one person forever. Whatever is beyond this, is mere specu-
lation. Not content with athuitting the fact that two natures are
united in tlie one person of Christ, the Lutheran tl^eologians insist
on explaining that fact. They are willing to acknowledge that
two natures or substances, soul and body, are united in the one
person in man, without pretending to explain the essential nature
of the union. Why then can they not receive the fact that two
natures are united in Christ without philosophizing about it ? The
first objection, therefore, is that the Lutheran doctrine is an at-
tempt to explain the inscrutable.
2. A second objection is that the character of the explanation
was determined by the peculiar views of Luther as to the Lord's
Supper. He believed that the body and blood of Christ are really
and locally present in the Eucharist. And when asked, How can
the body of Chinst which is in heaven be in many different places
at the same time ? He answered that the body of Christ is every-
where. And when asked. How can that be ? His only answer
was. That in virtue of the incarnation the attributes of the divine
nature were communicated to the human, so that wherever the
Logos is there the soul and body of Christ must be.
There are two tilings specially prominent in Luther as a theo-
logian. The one is his entire subjection to the authority of Scrip-
ture, as he understood it. He seemed, moreover, never to doubt
the correctness of his interpretations, nor was he willing to tolerate
doubt in others. As to matters not clearly determined in the
Bible, according to his view, he was exceedingly tolerant and lib-
eral. But with regard to points which he believed to be taught in
the Word of God, he allowed neither hesitation nor dissent. The
other marked trait in his character was his power of faith. He
could believe not only what was repugnant to his feelings, but what
was directly opposed to his system, and even what was in its own
natiu-e impossible. His cardinal doctrine was "justification by
faith alone," as he translated Romans iii. 28. He constantly taught
not only that no man could be saved without faith in Christ, but
that faith alone was necessary. Yet as he understood our Lord in
John iii. 5, to teach that baptism is essential to salvation, he as-
serted its absolute necessity, although sorely against his will. To
reconcile this with his doctrine of the necessity and sufficiency of
faith, he held that new-born infants, when baptized, exercised faith,
although he meant by faith the intelligent, voluntary, and cordial
reception of Christ as He is offered in the gospel. In like manner,
§ 7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 415
he hated the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, and was bit-
terly opposed to all the subtleties of scholasticism. Yet as he un-
derstood our Lord's words, " This is my body," literally, he adopted
all the subtleties, inconsistencies, and, we may say, impossibilities,
involved in the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body. Body
includes the idea of form as well as of substance. A man's body
is not the water, ammonia, and lime of which it is composed. It is
certainly a strong objection to any doctrine that it owes its existence
mainly to the desire to support a false interpretation of Scripture.
Lvatherans, indeed, deny that their doctrine concerning the per-
son of Christ is thus subordinate to their views of the Lord's Sup-
per. Even Dorner, in one place, seems to take the same ground.
Elsewhere, however, he fully admits the fact. Thus when speak-
ing of Luther, he says that he " did not develop his deep and full
Christological intuitions in a connected doctrinal form. His con-
troversy with the Swiss, on the contrary, had led him, as we have
shown, to the adoption of single divergent principles, which aided
in reducing Christology to the rank of a follower in the train of
another doctrine, instead of conceding to it an independent life and
sphere of its own." ^ And on the next page he says, " Even the
champions of peace between the evangelical parties put their
Christology in a position of dependence on the doctrine of the
Eucharist, which almost involved the entire loss of the grand fea-
tures of Luther's doctrine."
3. It is to be objected to the Lutheran doctrine, not only that it
undertakes to explain what is an inscrutable mystery, and that the
explanation derives its character fi-om Luther's views of the
Eucharist, but also that the explanation itself is utterly unsatis-
factory. In the first place, it is one sided. It insists on a com-
munication of natures and a communion of attributes. Lutherans
maintain that God became man as truly, and in the same sense that
man became God. Yet they deny that the divine nature received
anything from the human, or that God was in any way subject to
the limitations of humanity. Nevertheless, such limitation appears
to be involved in the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's humiliation.
The idea is that after the incarnation the Logos is not extra car-
nem, that all his activity is with and through the activity of his
humanity ; and yet it is affirmed that the humanity did not exer-
cise, while on earth, except occasionally, its divine perfections.
This seems of necessity to involve the admission that the Logos
did not exercise those jierfections during the period of the humilia-
1 Dorner's History of the Doctrine on the Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 172.
416 PART III. Ch. in. — the person of CHRIST.
tion. That is, while Christ was on earth, the know-ledge and
power of the Logos were measured and circum.scribed by the
knowledge and power of the human soul of Christ. This is the
modern doctrine of KtVwo-ts which Luther rejected. He refused,
says Dorner, " to purchase an actual growth of the divine-human
vital unity at the price of a depotentiation or self-emptying of the
Logos." ^
In the second place, the doctrine in question is destitute of any
Scriptural support. Almost all the arguments derived from the
Scriptures, urged by Lutherans, are founded on passages in which
the person of Christ is denominated from his human nature
when divine attributes or prerogatives are ascribed to Him ;
whence it is inferred that those attributes and prerogatives belong
to his humanity. Thus because it is said, " The Son of Man is in
heaven," it is inferred that the human nature, i. e., the soul and
body of Christ, were in heaven while He was on earth. But they
do not carry out the principle, and argue that because Christ is
denominated from his divine nature when the limitations of human-
ity are ascribed to Him, that therefore his divine nature is limited.
But if his being called God when He is said to have purchased the
Church with his blood, does not prove that the divine nature
suffered death, neither does his being called the Son of Man when
He is said to be in heaven, prove the ubiquity of his humanity.
Still less force is due to the argument from passages in which the
Theanthropos is the subject to which divine perfections and pre-
rogatives are ascribed. That our Lord said, " All power is given
unto me in heaven and in earth," no more proves that his human
nature is almighty, than his saying, "Before Abraham was I am,"
proves that his humanity is eternal. If saying that man is a rational
creature does not imply that his body thinks, saying that Jesus
Christ is God, does not imply that his human nature is divine. If
the personal union between the soul and body in man, does not
imply that the attributes of the soul are communicated to the body,
then the personal union of the two natures in Christ does not imply
that the divine attributes are communicated to his humanity.
In the third place, the Lutheran doctrine destroys the integrity
of the human nature of Christ. A body which fills immensity is
not a human body. A soul which is omniscient, omnipresent, and
almighty, is not a human soul. The Christ of the Bible and of the
human heart is lost if this doctrine be true.
In the fourth place, the Lutheran doctrine is contrary to the
1 Dorner's History of the Doctrine on the Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 97.
§7.] LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. 417
entire drift of the teaching of the Word of God, and of the whole
Church. If anything is plainly revealed in the Scriptures concern-
ing our Lord, and if there is anything to which the heart of the
behever instinctively clings, it is that although He is God over all
and blessed forever. He is nevertheless a man like ourselves ; bone
of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ; one who can be touched with a
sense of our infirmities ; and who knows from his own experience
and present consciousness, what a weak and infirm thing human
nature is. He became and continues a man that He might be a
merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God. But
a man whose body and soul fill immensity, who " as man " is om-
niscient and omnipotent, as just said, ceases to be a man. His
humanity is merged into divinity, and He becomes not God and
man, but simply God, and we have lost our Saviour, the Jesus of
the Bible, who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,
who was one with us in his humanity, and therefore can sympathize
with us and save us.
Finally, it is a fatal objection to the doctrine under consideraticm
that it involves the physical impossibility that attributes are separa-
ble from the substances of which they are the manifestation. This
is the same kind of impossibility as action without something act-
ing : or, motion without something moving. It is an objection
urged by Lutherans as well as others against the Romish doctrine
of transubstantiation that it supposes the accidents, or attributes
of the bread and wine in the Eucharist, to continue when their sub-
stance no longer exists. In like manner, according to the Lutheran
doctrine, the attributes of the divine nature or essence are trans-
ferred to another essence. If there be no such transfer or commu-
nication, then the human nature of Christ is no more omniscient or
almighty, than the worker of a miracle is omnipotent. If the divine
nature only exercises its omnipotence in connection with the activ-
ity of the humanity, then the humanity is the mere organ or instru-
ment of the divine nature. This idea, however, the Lutherans
repudiate. They admit that for God to exercise his power, when
Peter said to the lame man, " Rise up and walk," was something
entirely different from rendering Peter omnipotent. Besides, om-
nipresence and omniscience are not attributes of which a creature
can be made the organ. Knowledge is something subjective. If a
mind knows everything, then that mind, and not another in con-
nection with it, is omniscient. If Christ's body is everywhere
present, then it is the substance of that body, and not the essence
of God that is omnipresent. The Lutheran doctrine is, however,
VOL. II. 27
418 PART III. Ch. Ill — the person OF CHRIST.
that the essential attributes or properties of the two natures remain
unchanged after the hypostatical union. The properties of the
divine essence do not become the properties of the human. Then
the humanity of Christ has the attributes of his divinity without its
essence, and yet those attributes or properties do not inliere in his
human substance.^
It seems a plain contradiction in terms, to say that the human
becomes divine, that the finite becomes infinite ; and no less a
contradiction to say that the humanity of Christ has infinite attri-
butes and yet itself is not infinite.
The Lutheran doctrine of the Person of Christ has never been
disconnected from the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
Both are peculiar to that Church and form no part of Catholic
Christianity.
§ 8. Later Forms of the Doctrine.
During the period between the Reformation and the present
time, the doctrine concerning the Person of Christ was constantly
under discussion. The views advanced however were, for the
most part, referrible to the one or other of the forms of the doc-
trine already considered. The only theories calling for special
notice are Socinianism and that of the Preexistent Humanity of
Christ.
Socinianism.
Socinus was an Italian, born of a noble family at Siena, in 1539.
The earlier part of his life was not devoted to learning. Being a
favourite of the Grand Duke, he passed twelve years at his court,
and then removed to Basel that he might prosecute his theologi-
cal studies, in which he had become deeply interested. After a
few years he removed to Poland and settled at Cracow. There
and in its vicinity he passed the greater part of his active life. He
died in 1604.
The early Socinians erected a college at Racovia, in Lesser Po-
land, which attained so high a reputation that it attracted students
from among Protestants and Romanists. It was however sup-
pressed by the government in 1658, and the followers of Socinus,
after having suffered a protracted persecution, were expelled from
the kingdom.
1 The Form of Concord, chap. viii. sections 6 and 7, Epitome; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 606,
says, " Credimus, docemus et confitemur, divinam et humanam naturas non in imam sub-
stantiam commixtas, nee unam in alteram mutatam esse, sed utramque naturam retinere
siias proprietates essentiales, ut quis alterius naturae proprietates fieri iieqiieant.
" Proprietates divinae naturoe sunt: esse omiiipotentem, ajternam, infinitam, et secundum
nature naturalisque sure essentise proprietatem, per se, ubique presentem esse, omnia
novisse, etc. Usee omnia neque sunt ueque unquam tiunt humanse natur® proprietates."
§8.] LATER FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 419
Socinus and his followers admitted the divine authority of the
Scriptures. The sacred writers, they said, wrote, divino Spiritu im-
puhi eoque dictante. They admitted that the Bible contained doc-
trines above, but not contrary to reason. Of this contrariety reason
was to judge. On this ground they rejected many doctrines held
by the Church universal, especially the doctrines of the Trinity
and of the Atonement. Socinus said that as there is but one
divine essence there can be but one divine person. He denied that
there is any such thing as natural religion or natural theology.
Supernatural revelation he regarded as the only source of our
knowledge of God and of divine things. The only religion was the
Christian, which he defined to be " Via divinitus proposita et pate-
facta perveniendi ad immortalitatem, seu aeternam vitam."^ This
is the answer to the first question of the " Brevissima Institutio,"
of which Socinus was the author.
All men having sinned they became subject to the penalty of
eternal death, which Socinus understood to be annihilation. To
deliver men from this penalty God sent Christ into the world, and
it is only through Him that immortality can be secured. Concern-
ing Christ, he taught that He was in Himself and by nature a
mere man, having had no existence prior to his being born of the
Virgin Mary. He was, however, distinguished from all other
men, —
1. By his miraculous conception.^
2. Although peccable and liable to be tempted, He was entirel}^
free from sin.
3. He received a special baptism of the Holy Ghost, that is, of
the divine efficiency.
4. Some time before entering upon his public ministry He was
taken up into heaven that He might see God and be instructed
immediately by Him. There are two passages which speak of
Christ's having been in heaven (John iii. 13, and John vi. 62).
" In priore loco," says Socinus, " ex Graeco ita verba Christi legi
possunt, ut dicat, filium hominis non quidem esse in coelo, sed fuisse.
1 Chrhdnnce Religionis brevissima Tvstitutio per Fnlerrognliones et Responslnnes, qunm
Cathechismum vulyo vocnnt. Scripta a Fausto Socino Senensi. IrenopoU, Post annum 1656.
It makes a part of tlie first volume of the works of Faustus Socinus, as published in the
Bihliotheca Frntvum Polomn-um, pp. 651-676.
2 On this point Socinus, in the Brevisdma Insdiutio, s&ys, " De Christi essentia ita statuo
ilium esse hominem Kom. v. 15, in Virginia utero et sic sine viri ope, divini Spiiitu* vi con-
ceptum ac forniatum, Matt. i. 20-23 ; Luc. i. .35, indeque genituni, prinuim quidem pati-
bilem ac mortalem 2 Cor. xiii. 4, donee scilicet munus sibi a Deo demandatum hie in terris
obivit; deinde vero postquam in coelum a.*cendit, impatibilem et immortalem factum.
Rom. vi. 9." Btbliolheca Fratrum Pohmmim, Fausti Socini Opera, vol. i. p. 654,
420 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of christ.
Vox enim Grffica wv quee per praesens tempus reddita fuit, potest,
ut doctissimi aliqui interpretes annotarunt (Erasmus et Beza),
reddi per praeteritum imperfectum ; ut legatur non qui est, sed, qui
erat in coelo.^^^ As no pi'cexistence of Christ was admitted, these
passages were regarded as direct assertions of his being taken up
into heaven during his earthly life.
5. The great distinction of Cin'ist is that since his resurrection
and ascension all power in heaven and in earth has been committed
to Him. He is exalted above all creatures, and constituted God'a
viceroy over the whole universe. The question is asked, " Quid
tamen istud ejus divinum imperium nominatim complectitur ? "
To which the answer is, " Propter id quod jam dictum est, nempe
quod hoc potestatem complectitur plenissimam et absolutissimam
in verum Dei populura, hinc necessario sequitur, eodem divinci
imperio contineri potestatem et dominationem in omnes angeloa
et spiritus tarn malos, quam bonos."'-^ And again : "Nonne ex eadem
tua ratiocinatione sequitur, Jesum Christum in omnes homines ple-
num dominatum habere? Sine dubio; nee solum in omnes homines
sed praeter ipsum unum Deum 1 Cor. xv. 27, prorsus in alia omnia,
quemadmodum divina testimonia nos diserte docent." ^
6. On account of this exaltation and authority Christ is properly
called God, and is to be worshipped. Socinus would recognize
no man as a Christian who was not a worshipper of Christ. The
answer to Question 246 in the Racovian Catechism, declares those
"qui Christum non invocant nee adorandum censent," to be no
Christians, because in fact they have no Christ.*
7. Socinus acknowledges that men owe their salvation to Christ.
He saves them not only in his character of prophet by teaching them
the truth ; not only in his character of priest by interceding for
them ; but especially in virtue of his kingly office. He exercises
the divine and absolute power and authority granted to Him for
their protection and assistance. He operates not only over them
and for them, but also within them, so that it is through Him that
immortality or eternal life is secured.
From all this it appears that Socinus and his early followers held
1 Bibliotkeca Fralrum Polonoruin, Faush Socini Opera, vol. i. p. 674.
- Ibid. vol. i. p. 656. 3 Ibid.
* In answer to the question, " Numquid liumanae naturse in Christo exaltationem recte
percipere non prorsus necessarian! esse statuis i"' the Brevissima Instilutio answers {Ibid.
p. 655), " Eatenus recfani cognitionem istam prorsus necessariani esse statuo, quatenus quis
sine ilia non esset Christo Jesu divinum cultum exhibiturus, ob earn causani, quam antea
dixi; nimirum, quod Deus ut id a nobis fiat, omnino re(iuirit." Socinus also says that they
are not Christians who deny that Christ understands our thoughts when we pray. Ibid.
656.
§8.] LATER FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 421
much more exalted views of Christ than those who in Great Britain
and America are called Socinians, by whom our Lord is regarded
as an ordinary man. The term Unitarian, especially in this coun-
try, is used in a sense which includes all who deny the doctrine of
the Trinity and retain the name of Christians. It therefore includes
Arians, Semi-Arians, genuine Socinians, and Humanitarians.
Preexistence of Christ's Humanity.
Swedenhorg.
This theory has been held in different forms. The doctrine of
Swedenborg is so mystical that it is very difficult to be clearly
understood, and it has been modified in a greater or less degree by
his recognized disciples. Swedenborg was the son of a Swedish
bishop. He was born in January, 1688, and died in March, 1772.
He enjoyed every advantage of early education. He manifested
extraordinary precocity, and made such attainments in every
branch of learning as to gain the highest rank among the literati of
that day. He wrote numerous v^^orks in all the departments of
science before he turned his attention to matters of religion.
Believing that the existing Church in all its forms had failed to
arrive at the true sense of Scripture, he regarded himself as called
by God, in an extraordinary or miraculous manner, to reveal the
hidden meaning of the Word of God and found a new Church.
1. Concerning God, he taught that He was not only essence but
form, and that that form was human. He called God " the eternal
God-man." There are two kinds of bodies, material and spiritual.
Every man, besides his external material body has another which
is internal and spiritual. The latter has all the organs of the for-
mer, so that it can see, hear, and feel. At death the outer body is
laid aside, and the soul thereafter acts through the ethereal or spir-
itual vestment. This is the only resurrection which Swedenborg
admitted. There is no rising again of the bodies laid in the grave.
As however the spiritual corresponds to the material, those who
know each other in this world will enjoy mutual recognition in the
world to come. This feature of his anthropology is connected with
his doctrine concerning God. For as the soul from its nature forms
for itself a body for action ad extra, so the essence of God forms
for itself a spiritual body for external manifestation.
As there is but one divine essence, Swedenborg maintained that
there can be but one divine person. The Church doctrine of the
Trinity he regarded as Tritheistic. He admitted a Trinity of
422 PART III. Cii. III. — THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
princi{)les, but not of persons. As soul and body in man are one
person, and from them proceeds the activity which operates without,
so in God the divine and human are the Father and the Son, as
one person, and the Holy Spirit is their efficiency or sanctifying
influence.
2. Concerning man, Swedenborg taught that he was created in
the image of God, and was a creature of a very exalted nature.
The Scriptural account of the fall he understood allegorically of the
apostasy of the Church. Men, however, he admits, are sinful, and
are even born with a bias to evil, but they have not lost their
ability to do good. They consequently need redemption. They
are susceptible of being delivered from evil not only because they
retain their moral liberty, but also because in virtue of the inward
spiritual body tliey are capable of intercourse with spiritual beings.
As man by means of his material body is conversant with the world
of sense, so in virtue of his spiritual body he is caj)able of intercourse
with the inhabitants of the spiritual world. Swedenborg reports
man}' instances in which he conversed with God and angels, good
and bad. By angels, however, he meant men who had departed
this life. He did not admit the existence of any created intelligence
other than man.
3. Christ he held to be Jehovah, the only living and true God,
the creator, preserver, and ruler of the world. As this divine
person was God and man from eternity, his incarnation, or mani-
festation in the flesh, consisted in his assuming a material body with
its psychical life in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This was the
Kody which grew, suffered, and died. In the case of ordinary men
the material bod}- is left forever in the grave, but in tiie case of
Christ the outward body was gradually refined and glorified until
it was lost in that which is spiritual and eternal. This idea of a
twofold body in Christ is not by any means peculiar to Sweden-
borg. Barclay, the representative theologian of the Quakers,
says : " As there was the outward visible body and temple of Jesus
Christ, which took its origin from the Virgin Mary: there is also
the spiritual body of Christ, by and thi^ough which He that was the
Word in the beginning with God, and was and is God, did reveal
Himself to the sons of men in all ages, and whereby men in all
ages come to be made partakers of eternal life, and to have com-
munion and fellowship with God and Christ." ^ And again, P.
Poiret, of Amsterdam, teaches that " La Majesty divine voulut
1 An Apology far the True Christian Divinity, Prop. xiii. 2 ; edit. Philadelphia, 1805
D. 463.
§8.] LATER FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 423
couvrir son corps glorleux de notre chair mortelle, qu'il voulut
prendre dans le sein d'une Vierge." " Le corps de Jdsus Christ,
se revetant de la chair et du sans; de la bien heureuse Vierge,
fera aussi peu un compose de deux corps diffei'ents, qu'un habit
blanc et lumineux plonge dans un vase de couleur chargde et ob-
scure, ou il se cliarge de la matiere, qui produit cette opacite, ne
devient pour cela un habit double ou deux habits, au lieu d'un." ^
4. Christ's redemptive work does not consist in his bearing our
sins upon the tree, or in making satisfaction to the justice of God
for our offences. All idea of such satisfaction Swedenborg rejects.
The work of salvation is entirely subjective. Justification is par-
don granted on repentance. The people of God are made in-
wardly righteous, and being thus holy are admitted to the presence
of God and holy spirits in heaven. His peculiar views of the state
of the departed, or of Heaven and Hell, do not call for considera-
tion in this place.^
Isaac Watts.
No one familiar with Dr. Watts' " Psalms and Hymns," can
doubt his being a devout worshipper of our Lord Jesus Christ, or
call in question his belief in the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet on
account of his peculiar views on the person of Christ, there is a
vague impression that he had in some way departed from the faith
of the Church. It is, indeed, often said that he was Arian. In
his works,^ however, there is a dissertation on " The Christian
Doctrine of the Trinity: or. Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons
and one God, asserted and proved, with their divine Rights and
Honors vindicated, by plain evidence of Scripture, without the aid
or incumbrance of human Schemes. Written chiefly for the use of
private Christians." In that dissertation the common Church doc-
trine is presented in the usual form, and sustained by the common
arguments, with singular perspicuity and force.
1 CEconomie du Relablissenient apres I' Incarnation de Jesus Christ, chap. ii. §§ 11, 12.
Quoted by Domer, Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 328.
2 Swedenborg's doctrines are most clearly and concisely presented in his book, Vera
Christiana Reliyio, Amsterdam, 1771. It has been frequently translated. An English ver-
sion was published in Boston in 1833, in one volume, 8vo, pp. 576. As an illustration of
the way in which Swedenborg speaks of his intercourse with the spirit-world, a few sen-
tences may be quoted from the thirtieth page of the work just mentioned. He saj's that
when he was astonished at the multitude of persons who merged God into nature, an angel
stood at his side and said, " ' What are you meditating about? ' and I replied, ' About the
multitude of such persons as believe that nature is of itself, and thus the creator of the uni-
verse.' And the angel said to me, ' All hell is of such, and thej' are called there satans and
ilevils; satans, who have confirmed themselves in favour of nature, and thence have de
nied God; devils, who have lived wickedly, and thus have rejected from their hearts all
acknowledgment of God.' "
8 Watts' Works, edit. London, 1753, vol. vi. pp. 413-492.
424 PART in. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
His peculiar views on the person of Christ are brought out in
three discourses on " The Glory of Christ as God-man," ^ pub-
lished in 1746. In the first of these he refers to the " visible ap-
pearances of Christ, as God before his incarnation," and brings
into view all the texts in which He is called Jeliovah, God, and
Lord, and those in which divine attributes and prerogatives are
ascribed to Him.
In the second, he treats of the " extensive powers of the human
nature of Christ in its present glorified state." In a previous essay
he took the position that the " human soul of Christ is the first,
the greatest, the wisest, the holiest, and the best of all created
spirits." 2 He argues this point from all those passages of Scrip-
ture which speak of the exaltation of Christ and of the gift to Him
of absolutely universal dominion. As the divine nature of Christ
does not admit of exaltation or of receiving anything as a gift, he
inferred that these passages must be understood of his human
nature, and therefore that Christ as a man must be regarded as
exalted over all created beings. To the objection, " How is it
possible that a human spirit should be endued with powers of so
vast an extent ? " he answers, first, that the power in question is
not infinite ; and secondly, that if the doctrine of the infinite
divisibility of matter be true, we cannot fix the minimum of small-
ness, and how then can we determine the maximum of greatness.
" Why," he asks, " may not the human soul of Christ be as well
appointed to govern the world, as the soul of man is appointed to
govern his body, when it is evident the soul of man does not know
one thousandth part of the fine branchings of the muscles and
nerves, and the more refined vapour or animal spirits which are
parts of this body ? " ^ Thirdly, we can hardly set a limit even to
our own capacity ; and yet the " soul of Christ may be reasonably
supposed in its own nature to transcend the powers of all other
souls as far as an angel exceeds an idiot, and yet be but a human
soul still, {oY gradus non mutant speciem.''^^ Fourthly, if the powers
of the soul of Christ were not in his state of humiliation sufficient
for the purposes of government and judgment, that does not prove
that they are not now sufficient in his glorified estate. " Who
knows what 'amazing enlargement may attend all the natural
powers of man when advanced to a state of glory?' "^ Fifthly,
and mainly, this supreme exaltation of the power of the human
1 Watts' Works, ut supra, vol. vi. pp. 721-855. 2 jbid, p. 706.
3 Ibid. p. 786. •* J^id- P- 787.
6 Ibid. p. 789.
§8.] LATER FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 425
soul of Christ is due to its union with the divine nature. It was
because of this union tliat when the soul of Christ, while here on
earth, willed to perform a miracle, the effect immediately followed.
So " the man Christ may give forth all the commands of God
whereby the world is governed." ^ " Upon this representation of
things," he adds, "the various language of Scripture appears to be
true, and is made very intelligible. Christ says ' He can do nothing
of Himself, He knew not the day of judgment' when He was here
on earth, etc., and yet He is said to ' know the hearts of men, and
to know all things ' ; for as fast as the divine mind united to Him
was pleased to communicate all these ideas, so fast was his human
nature capable of receiving them." ^
The third discourse is devoted to proving the preexistence of
the human soul of Christ. He argues from the fact that there are
many expressions in the Bible, which seem to imply that He had
a dependent nature before He came into this world. He is called
the angel or messenger of God, and is represented as sent to exe-
cute his will. He urges also the fact that He is said to be the
image of God. But the divine essence or nature cannot be the
image of itself. That term can only apply to a created nature
united to the divine, so that the " complex person " thus consti-
tuted, should reveal what God is. An argument is also drawn
from all those passages in which Christ is said to have humbled
Himself, to have become poor, to have made Himself of no reputa-
tion. All this cannot, he says, be properly understood of the
divine nature, but is perfectly intelligible and full of meaning
if referred to the human soul of our Lord. It was an act of
unspeakable condescension for the highest intelligent creature to
"empty Himself" and become as ignorant and feeble as an
infant, and to submit not only to grow in wisdom, but to subject
Himself to the infirmities and sufferings of our mortal state. If
asked how so exalted an intellect can be reduced to the condition
or state of an infant, he answers, that something analogous to this
not unfrequently occurs, even in human experience. Men of ma-
ture age and of extensive learning have lost all their knowledge,
and have been reduced to the necessity of learning it all over
again, though in some cases it has returned suddenly. It was the
same nature that emptied itself that was afterwards filled with
glory as a recompense. Another argument for the preexistence of -
the soul of Christ, he says, may be drawn from the fact that his
incarnation "'is always expressed in some corporeal languao-e,
1 Watts, Woi-h, ut supra, vol. vi. p. 795. 2 /Jj^/. p. 795^
426 PART in. Ch. ni. — the person of christ.
such as denotes liis taking on Him animal nature, or body, or flesh,
without the least mention of taking a soul.' " ^
Again,2 " ' The covenant betwixt God the Father and his Son
Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind, is represented in
Scripture as being made and agreed upon from or before the foun-
dation of the world. Is it not then most proper that both real
parties should be actually present, and that this should not be
transacted merely within the divine essence by such sort of distinct
personalities as have no distinct mind and will? The essence of
God is generally agreed by our Protestant divines to be the same
single numerical essence in all three personalities, and therefore it
can be but one conscious mind or spirit. Now can one single un-
derstanding and will make such a covenant as Scripture repre-
sents?' I grant the divine natui'e which is in Christ from eternity
contrived and agreed all the parts of this covenant. But does it
not add a lustre and glory, and more conspicuous equity, to this
covenant, to suppose the man Christ Jesus who is most properly
the mediator according to 1 Tim. ii. 5, to be also present before
the world was made, to be chosen and appointed as the redeemer
or reconciler of mankind, to be then ordained the head of his future
people, to receive promises, grace, and blessings in their name, and
to accept the solemn and weighty trust from the hand of his
Father, that is, to take care of millions of souls ? "
He also argues from what the Bible teaches of the Sonship of
Christ. " When He is called a Son, a begotten Son, this seems to
imply derivation and dependency ; and perhaps the Sonship of
Christ, and his being the only begotten of the Father, may be
better explained by attributing it to his human soul, existing by
some peculiar and immediate manner of creation, formation, or
derivation from the Father, before other creatures were formed ;
especially if we include in the same idea of Sonship his union to
the divine nature, and if we add also his exaltation to the office of
the Messiah, as King and Lord of all." ^
Dr. Watts explains clearly what he means by the preexistence
of tlie humanit}' of Christ, when he says : * " All the idea which
I have of a human soul is this, namely, a created mind or spirit
which hath understanding and will, and rational powers, and which
is fit to be united to a human body, in sncli a manner as to exert
the powers of a man, to feel the appetites and sensibilities and
passions of a man, as to receive impressions or sensations, whether
1 Watts' Works, vol. vi. p. 820. " Ibid. p. 819.
8 Ibid. p. 825. * Ibid. p. BU.
§ 8.] LATER FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 427
pleasant or painful, by the means of that body, and is also able to
actuate and influence all the animal powers of that body in a way
agreeable to human nature."
The above is very far from being a full exposition of the consid-
erations urged by Dr. Watts in support of his theory. It is sim-
'ply a selection of the more plausible of his arguments presented in
order that his doctrine may be properly understood.
It appears that he believed in the eternal Godhead of the Logos
as the second person of the Trinity ; and that God, before any
other creatures were called into existence, created a human soul
in personal union with the Logos of such exalted powers as to
render him the greatest of all created spirits ; that the incarnation
consisted in this complex person assuming a material human body
with its animal life ; that the humiliation of Christ consisted in his
human soul thus exalted in its own nature, emptying itself of its
knowledge, power, and glory, and submitting not only to the gradual
development of his humanity, but also to all that made our Lord
while here on earth a man of sorrows. His exaltation consisted in
the enlargement of the powers of his soul during his state of humil-
iation, and in his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of
God.
Ohjectio7is.
The more obvious objections to this theory are, —
1. Tliat it is contrary to the common faith of the Church, and,
therefore, to the obvious sense of Scripture. The Bible in teach-
ing that the Son of God became man, thereby teaches that He
assumed a true body and a rational soul. For neither a soul with-
out a body, nor a body without a soul, is a man in the Scriptural
sense of the term. It was the Logos which became man ; and not
a God-man that assumed a material body.
2. The passages of Scripture cited in its support are interpreted,
for the most part, in viola,tion of the recognized principle that what-
ever is true of either nature in Christ, may be predicated of his
person. As Christ could say, " I thirst," without implying that
his divine nature was subject to the wants of a material body ; so
He could say, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth," without teaching that such power vests in his humanity.
3. The doctrine that Christ's human soul was the first and most
exalted of created spirits, raises Him beyond the reach of human
sympathies. He is, as man, farther from us than the angel Ga-
briel. We need, and the Bible reveals to us a, so to speak, more
circumscribed Saviour, one who, although true God, is neverthe-
428 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
less a man like unto his brethren., whom we can embrace in the
arms of our faith and love.^
§ 9. Modern Forms of the Doctrine.
Dorner, in the first edition of his work on the " Person of
Christ," says that the Lutheran theology carried the attempt to
preserve the unity of Christ's person, on the Church assumption
tliat He possessed two distinct natures, to the utmost extreme. If
that attempt be a failure, nothing more remains. He holds it to be
a failure not oidy because it involves the impossible assumption of
a transfer of attributes without a change of substance, but also be-
cause it is one-sided. It refuses to admit of the communication of
human attributes to the divine nature, whilst it insists on the trans-
fer of divine perfections to the human nature. And moreover, he
urges, that admitting all the Lutheran theory claims, the union of
the two natures remains just as unreal as it is on the Church doc-
trine. Any distinction of natures, in the ordinary sense of the
words, must, he says, be given up. It is on this assumption that
the modern views of the person of Christ are founded. These
views may be divided into two classes, the Pantheistical and the
Theistical. These two classes, however, have a good deal in com-
mon. Both are founded on the principle of the oneness of God and
man. This is admitted on all sides. " The characteristic feature
of all recent Christologies," says Dorner, " is the endeavour to
point out the essential unity of the divine and human." ^ The
heading of the section in which this admission occurs, is, " The
Foundations of the New Christology laid by Schelling, Hegel,
Schleiermacher." This is equivalent to saying that the New
Christology is founded on the principles of the pantheistic philoso-
phy. Baur^ says the same thing. He entitles the last division
of his work on the Trinity, " Die gegenseitige Durchdringung der
Philosophie und der Theologie," i. e., The mutual interpenetration
of Philosophy and Theology. The latter is merged into the for-
mer. Dr. Ullmann says, the doctrine of the oneness of God and
man, which he represents as the fundamental idea of Schleierma-
1 Dr. Watts, vol. vi. pp. 853, 854, refers to several distinguished writers and theologians
as agreeing with him as to his doctrine of the preexistence of the soul of Christ. Among
them are Dr. Henrv More, Mystery of Godliness; Dr. Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester,
in his Discourse oj" the descent of the man Christ Jesus from Heaven; Dr. Francis Gastrell
Bishop of Chester, in his Remarks on Dr. Clarke's Hcripture Doctrine of the Trinity; Dr
Thomas Burnet, of the Charter House, in his book, De Statu Mortitorum et Besuryentium.
2 Dorner, div. ii. vol. iii. p. 101.
3 Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieini(/keit und Menschtcerdnnq Gottes in ihrer ges-
chichllichen Enticicklung. Von Dr. Ferdinand Cliristian Baur, Tiibingen, 1843, vol. iii. p. 751.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 429
cher's theology and of Christianity itself, is not entirely new. It
was inculcated by the German Mystics of the Middle Ages.^ He-
gel says that what the Bible teaches of Christ is not true of an
individual, but only of mankind as a whole ; and Hegel's Christo-
logical ideas, Dr. Johu Nevin of Merccrsburg, says, " are very
significant and full of instruction." ^ The objection that these prin-
ciples are pantheistical, he pronounces " a mere sound without any
force whatever," and adds that we need a Christian pantheism to
oppose the antichristian pantheism of the day. Schleiermacher
says that a pantheism which holds to the formula " One and All "
(" the all-one-doctrine ") is perfectly consistent with religion, and
differs little in its effects from Monotheism ! Similar avowals might
be adduced without number. ■ Theologians of this class deny that
God and man are essentially different. They repeat, almost with
every breath, that God and man are one, and they make this the
fundamental idea of Christianity, and especially of Christology.
Pantheistical Christology.
As Christian theology purports to be an exhibition of the theol-
ogy of the Bible, every theory which involves the denial of a per-
sonal God, properly lies beyond its sphere. In modern systems,
however, there is such a blending of pantheistic principles with
theistic doctrines, that the two cannot be kept entirely separate.
Pantheistical and theistical theologians, of the modern school,
unite in asserting " the oneness of God and man." They under-
stand that doctrine, however, in different senses. With the former
it is understood to mean identity, so that man is only the highest
existence-form of God ; with tlve others, it often means nothing
more than that " natura humana capax est naturce divince.^' The
human is capable of receiving the attributes of the divine. Man
may become God.
It follows, in the first place, from the doctrine, that God is the
only real Being of which the world is the ever changing phenome-
non, that " die Menschwerdung Gottes ist eine Menschwerdung
von Ewigkeit." The incarnation of God is from eternity. And,
in the second place, that this process is continuous, complete in no
one instance, but only in the whole. Every man is a form of the
life of God, but the infinite is never fully realized or revealed in
any one manifestation. Some of these philosophers were willing to
1 Dr. UHmann, Es?aj' in the Sludien unci Kriliken firr 184G.
2 The Mystical Presence. A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the
Holy Eucharist. By the Kev. John W. Nevin, D. D., Professor of Theology in the Seminary
of the German Reformed Church, Philadelphia, 1846.
430 PART m. Cii. m. — THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
say that God was more fully manifested in Christ than in any other
individual of our race, but the difference between Him and other
men is only one of degree. Others say that the peculiar distinction
of Christ was that He had a clearer view and a deeper conviction
of the identity of God and man than any other man. It all amounts
to the summation of the doctrine as given by Strauss.^ " If," says
he, " the idea of the oneness of the divine and human natures, of
God and man, be a reality, does it follow that this reality is effected
or manifested once for all in a single individual, as never before
and never after him ? . . . . An idea is never exhibited in all its
fulness in a single exemplar ; and in all others only imperfectly.
An idea is always realized in a variety and multiplicity of exem-
plars, which complement each other ; its richness being diffused by
the constant change of individuals, one succeeding or supplanting
another Mankind, the human race, is the God-man. The
key to a true Christology is that the predicates which the Church
applies to Christ, as an individual, belong to an idea, or to a generic
whole." So Blasche '^ says, " We understand by God's becoming
man, not the revelation of Himself in one or more of the most per-
fect of men, but the manifestation of Himself in the race of men (in
der ganzen Menschheit)."
Theistical Christology,
We have the authority of Dorner for saying that the modern
speculations on Christology are founded on the two principles that
there is but one nature in Christ, and that human nature is capax
naturce divince, is capable of being made divine. To this must be
added a third, although Dorner himself does not hold it, that the
divine is capable of becoming human.
The advocates of these principles agree, First, in admitting that
there was a true growth of the man Christ Jesus. When an infant
He was as feeble, as ignorant, and as unconscious of moral character
as other infants. When a child He had no more intellectnal or
physical strength than other children. There is, however, a differ-
ence in their mode of statement as to what Christ was during the
maturity of his earthly life. According to some. He had no super-
human knowledge or power. All He knew was communicated to
Him, some say by the Father, others say by the Logos. The
miracles which He wrought were not by his own power, but
1 Das Leben Jesu, § 149, 3d edit. Tubingen, 1839, vol. ii. pp. 766, 767; and Dogmatik.
vol. ii. p. 214.
'^ Quoted by Strauss, Dogmatik, edit. Tubingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 214.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 431
by the power of God. At the grave of Lazarus He prayed for
power to restore his friend to life, or rather that God would raise
him from the dead; and He gave thanks that his prayer was
heard.
Secondly, they agree that the development of the humanity of
our Lord was without sin. He was from the beginning holy,
hai'mless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Nevertheless He
had to contend with all the infirmities of our nature, and to resist
all the temptations arising from the flesh, the world, and the devil,
with which his people have to contend. He was liable to sin. As
He was subject to hunger, thirst, weariness, and pain, as He had
feelings capable of being wounded by ingratitude and insult, He
was liable to the impatience and resentment which suffering or
injury is adapted to produce. As He was susceptible of pleasure
from the love and admiration of others. He was exposed to the
temptation of seeking the honour which comes from men. In all
things, however. He was without sin.
Thirdly, they agree that it was only gradually that Christ came to
the knowledge that He was a divine person, and into the possession
and use of divine attributes. Communications of knowledge and
power were made to Him from time to time from on high, so that
both the knowledge of what He was and the consciousness of the
possession of divine perfections came to Him by degrees, Christ's
exaltation, tlierefore, began and was carried on while He was here
on earth, but it was not until his resurrection and ascension that
He became truly and forever divine.
Fourthly, since his ascension and session at the right liand of
God, He is still a man, and only a man. Nevertheless He is an
infinite man. A man with all the cliaracteristics of a human soul
possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead. Since his ascension,
as Gess expresses it, a man has been taken into the adorable Trin-
ity. " As the glorified Son remains man, a man is thus received
into the trinitarian life of the Deity from and by the glorification
of the Son."^ Thomasius says the same thing. "Die immanente
1 The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Freely translated from the German of
W. F. Gess, with many additions, by J. A. Reubelt, D. D., Professor in Indiana University,
Bloomington, Ind. Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1870, p. 414. This work is admirably
translated, and presents the clearest outline of the modern doctrine of Kenosis wiiich has
yet appeared. The author expresses his satisfaction that he is sustained in his views arrived
at by the study of the Scriptures, t>y the authority of Liebner and Thomasius, who reached
substantially the s^me conclu-ions by the way of speculation. There is ground for this self-
congratulation of the author, for his book is far more Scriptural in its treatment of the sub-
ject than any other book of tiie same class with which we are acquainted. It calls for a
thorough review and candid criticism.
432 PART in. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
Lebensbewegung der drei Persoiien ist iiunmehr gewissermassen
eine iiottlicli-nienschliche geworden ; .... So tief ist in der Person
Christi die Menschheit in den Kreis der Trinitat hereingenommen
— und zwar nicht auf voriibergehende Weise, sondern fur immer.
Denn der Sohn bleibt ewig Mensch." ^ That is : The immanent
life movement of the three persons has now become in a measure
divine-human ; .... so deep has humanity in the person of
Christ been taken into the sphere of the Trinity, — and that not
in a temporary manner, but forever. For the Son remains man
eternally. On the following page he says that humanity, or man-
hood (Menschsein), has become the permanent existence-form of
God the Son. And again ^ he says that humanity (das menschliche
Geschlecht) is " exalted to full equality with God " (schlecht Gott
selbst gleichgesetzt). This would be absolutely impossible were
not human nature in its original constitution capable of receiving
all divine perfections and of becoming absolutely divine. Accord-
ingly, in this connection, Thomasius says that man is of all crea-
tures the nearest to God.^ " He must from his nature be capable
of full participation in the divine glory ; he must be the oi'gan into
which the entire fuhiess of the divine love can be poured, and
through which it can adequately act, otherwise we cannot under-
stand how God could appropriate human nature as his own perma-
nent form of existence."
The result of the incarnation, therefore, is that God becomes
man in such a sense that the Son of God has no life or activity, no
knowledge, presence, or power outside of or apart from his human-
ity. In Christ there is but one life, one activity, one consciousness.
Every act of the incarnate Logos is a human act, and every expe-
rience of the humanity of Christ, all his sorrows, infirmities, and
pains, were the experience of the Logos. "The absolute life, which
is the being of God, exists in the narrow hmits of an earthly-human
life ; absolute holiness and truth, the essential attinbutes of God,
develop themselves in the form of human thinking and willing ;
absolute love has assumed a human form, it lives as human feeling,
as human sensibility in the heart of this man ; absolute freedom
has the form of human self-determination. The Son of God has
not reserved for Himself a special existence form (ein besonderes
Fiirsichseyn), a special consciousness, a special sphere or power of
action ; He does not exist anywhere outside of the flesh (nee Ver-
1 Christi Person und Werk. Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mil-
telpunhe der Christologie mis. Von G. Thomasius, Dr. u. ord. Professor der Theologie an
der Universitat Erlangen. Zweite erweiterte Auflage, Erlangen, 1857, vol. ii. p. 295.
2 Jbid. p. 299. 3 Md. p. 296.
§ 9] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 433
bum extra carnem nee caro extra Verbum). He has in the totahty
of his being become man, his existence-and-life-fbrm is that of a
corporeal-spiritual man subject to the limitations of time and space.
The other side of this relation is tliat the liuman nature is taken up
entirely into the divine, and is pervaded by it. It has neither a
special human consciousness nor a special human activity of the
will for itself in distinction from that of the Logos, just as the latter
has nothing which does not belong to the former ; in the human
thinking, williug, and acting, the Logos thinks, wills, and acts. All
dualism of a divine and human existence-form, of a divine and
human consciousness, of a concomitancy of divine and human
action, is of necessity excluded ; as is also any successive communi-
cation (Hineinbildung) of one to the other ; it is an identical living
activity, sensibility, and development, because it is one Ego, one
divine human personality (unio, communio, communicatio, natu-
rarum)."^
As to the manner in which this complete identification of the
human and divine in the person of Christ is effected, there are, as
above intimated, two opinions. According to Dorner there is a
human soul to begin with, to which the Eternal Logos, without
subjecting Himself to any change, from time to time communicates
his divinity, as the human becomes more and more capable of
receiving the perfections of God, until at last it becomes completely
divine. With this Dorner connected a philosophical theory con-
cerning the relation of Christ to the universe, and especially to the
whole spiritual world.^
The other view of the subject is, that the Eternal Logos, by a
process of self-limitation, divested Himself of all his divine attributes.
He ceased to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. He
1 Thomasius, ut supra, pp. 201, 202
2 Baur, in his Lehre von der Dreieinif/keil, vol. iii. p. 987, gives the following account of
Dorner's theory: Wie der Mensch das Haupt und die Krone der natiirlichen Schopfung sei,
so sei auch die Menscheit als die auseinandergetretene Vielheit eines hohern Ganzen, einer
hohern Idee, zu betrachten, namlich Christi. Und wie die Natur sich nicht bios in der Idee
eines Menschen zur Einheit versamntile, sondern im wirklichen Menschen, so fasse sich auch
die Menschheit nicht zusammen in einer blossen Idee, einem idealen Christus, sondern in
dem wirklichen Gottmenschen, der ihre Totiilitiit personlich darstelle, und aller einzelnen
Individualitaten Urbilder oder ideale PersJinlichkeiten in sich versammle. Und wenn die
erste Zusammenfassung zerstreuter Moniente in Adam, wenn auch selbst noch ein Natur-
wesen, doch eine unendlich hohere Gestalt dargestellt habe, als jedes der einzelnen Natur-
wesen, so stehe auch der zweite Adam, obwolil in sich eine Zusammenfiissung der Mensch-
heit und selbst noch ein Mensch, doch als eine unendlich hohere Gestalt da, denn alle
' einzelnen Darstellungen unserer Gattung. Sei Adam das Haupt der natiirlichen Schopfung
gewesen, als solches aber bereits hiniiberreichend mit seinem Wesen in das Reich des Geistes
und hiniibergreifend iiber die natiirliche Welt, so sei Christus das Haupt der geistigen Schop-
fung, als solches aber schon hiniiberweisend von der Menschheit auf eine kosniische oder
ine^aphysiche Bedeutung seiner Person.
VOL. II. 28
434 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
reduced Himself, so to speak, to the dimensions of a man. While
an infant, as before said, He had no knowledge or power which
does not belong to any other human infant. He went through the
regular process of growth and development, and had all the experi-
ences of ordinary men, yet without sin. But as the substance of
the Logos Avas the substance of the infant born of the Virgin, it
continued to develop not only until it reached a height of excellence
and glory to which no other man ever attained, but until it ulti-
mately culminated in full equality with God.
On this point Thomasius says, First, that if the Eternal Son,
after the assumption of humanity, retained his divine perfections
and prerogatives, He did not become man, nor did He unite Him-
self with humanity. He hovered over it ; and included it as a
larger circle does a smaller. But there was no real contact or
communication. Secondly, if at the moment of the incarnation the
divine nature in the fulness of its being and perfection was commu-
nicated to the humanity, then Christ could not have had a human
existence. The historical life is gone ; and all bond of relationship
and sympathy with us is destroyed. Thirdly, the only way in
w^hich the great end in view could be answered was that God
Himself by a process of depotentiation, or self-limitation, should
become man ; that He should take upon Himself a form of exist-
ence subject to the limitations of time and space, and pass through
the ordinary and regular process of human development, and take
part in all the sinless experiences of a human life and death. ^
Ehrard.
Ebrard puts the doctrine in a somewhat different form. He
holds that the Logos reduced Himself to the dimensions of a man ;
but at the same time retained and exercised his divine perfections
as the second person of the Trinity. In answer to the question.
How human and divine attributes can be united in the same person,
he says the solution of the difficulty is to be found in the original
constitution and destiny of humanity. Man was designed for this
supreme dominion, perfect holiness, and boundless knowledge.
" The glorification of God as Son in time is identical with the acme
of the normal development of man." It is held by many, not by
all of the advocates of this theory, that the incarnation would have
taken place had men never sinned. It entered into the divine
purpose in reference to man that he should thus attain oneness with
Himself.
^ Thomasius, Christi Peison und Wei-k, vol. ii. pp. 141-143.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 435
As to the still more difficult question, How can the Son as the
second person of the Trinity retain his divine perfections (as Ehrard
holds that He does), and yet, as revealed on earth, lay them aside?
" The one is world-ruling and omniscient, and the other is not,"
he says we must understand the prohlem. It is not that two
natures become one nature. " Two natures as two things (Stiicken)
are out of the question." The Logos is not one nature, and the
incarnate Son of God, Jesus, another ; but the incarnate Son pos-
sesses the pi-operties of both natures. The question only is, How
can the incarnate Logos, since He has not the one nature, the
divine, in the form of God (in der Evvigkeitsform), be one with
the world-governing Logos who is in the form of God ? This
question, which is equivalent to asking. How the same individual
mind can be finite and infinite at the same time, he answers b}'
saying, first, that the continuity of existence does not depend upon
continuity of consciousness. A man in a swoon or in a state of
magnetic sleep, is the same person, although his consciousness be
suspended or abnormal. That is true, but the question is, How
the same mind can be conscious and unconscious at the same time,
How the same individual Loo-os can be a feeble infant and at the
same time the intelligently active world-governing God. Secondly,
he admits that the above answer does not fully meet the case, and
therefore adds that the whole difficulty disappears when we remem-
ber (dass die Ewigkeit nicht eine der Zeit parallellaufende Linie
ist), that Eternity and Time are not parallel lines. But, thirdly,
seeing that this is not enough, he says that the Eternal Logos
overlooks his human form of existence with one glance (mit einem
Schlage), whereas the incarnate Logos does not, but with true
human consciousness, looks forward and backward. All this avails
nothing. The contradiction remains. The theory assumes that
the same individual mind can be conscious and unconscious, finite
and infinite, ignorant and omniscient, at the same time.^
Cress.
Gess admits the contradiction involved in the doctrine as pre-
sented by Ebrard, and therefore adopts the common form of the
theory. He holds that the Eternal Son at the incarnation laid
aside the Godhead and became a man. The substance of the
Logos remained ; but that substance was in the form of an infimt,
and had nothing beyond an infant's knowledge or power. In the
1 Chrislliike Dogmaiik. Von Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard, Doctor und ord. Pro-
fessor der ref. Theologie zu Erlaiigen. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ii. §§ 391-39-t, pp. 1 42-149.
436 PART m. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
Trinity, the Father is God of Himself; the Son is God bv the com-
munication of the divine life from the Father. During the earthly
career of the Logos the communication of the divine life was sus-
pended. The Logos reduced to the limitations of manhood, re-
ceived from the Father such communications of supernatural power
as He needed. When He ascended and sat down at the right
hand of God, He received the divine life in all its fulness as He
had possessed it before He came into the world. " The same sub-
stance," he says, " slumbered in the womb of the Virgin, without
self-consciousness, which thirty-four years after yielded itself a
sacrifice, without blemish and spot, to the Father, having previously
revealed to mankind the truth, which it had perfectly compre-
hended. At the time of this slumber there already existed in this
substance that indestructible life by virtue of which it had accom-
plished our redemption (Heb. vii. 16), as well as the power to
know the Father as no other knows Him (Matt. xi. 27), but it
was unconscious life. Moreover, the same substance which now
slumbered in unconsciousness, had before existed with the Father
as the Logos, by whom the Father had created, governed, and
preserved the world, but it was no longer aware of this." ^ On
the opposite page, it is said, that it is the self-conscious will of a
man that calls all his powers into action. " When this sinks into
slumber, all the powers of the soul fall asleep. It was the sub-
stance of the Logos which in itself had the power to call the world
into existence, to uphold and enlighten it ; but when the Logos
sank into the slumber of unconsciousness, his eternal holiness, his
omniscience, his omnipresence, and all his really divine attributes
were gone ; it being the self-conscious will of the Logos through
which all the divine powers abiding in Him had been called into
action. They were gone, i. e., suspended, — existing still, but only
potentially. Fuither, a man when he awakes from sleep is at once
in full possession of all his powers and faculties ; but when con-
sciousness burst upon Jesus it was not that of the eternal Logos,
but a really human self-consciousness, which develops by degrees
and preserves its identity only through constant changes
It was this human form of self-conscious existence which the Logos
chose in his act of self-divestiture. Hence it plainly appears that
omniscience, which sees and knows all things at once, and from
one central point, and the unchangeable merging of the will into
the Father's, or divine holiness, are not to be attributed to Jesus
1 The Scripture Doctrine of the Persmi of Christ. Translated from the German, by J.
A. Reubelt, D. D., p. 342.
§9] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 437
while on earth ; and the same with the unchangeable bliss of the
livine life. Nor was it only eternal self-consciousness which the
Son laid aside, but He also 'went out from the Father.' We are
not to understand that the indwelling of the Father, Son, and
Spirit in each other had been dissolved, but that the Father's giving
the Son to have life in Himself, as the Father has, was suspended.
Having laid aside his self-consciousness and activity. He lost with
this the capacity of receiving into Himself the stream of life from
the Father, and sending it forth again ; in other words. He was no
longer omnipotent. Equally lost, or laid aside, was his omnipres-
ence, which must not, at all events, be considered as universally
diffused, but as dependent on the self-conscious will." ^
Memarks.
1. The first remark to be made on this theory in all its forms is
that it is a departure from the faith of the Church. This objection
turns up first on every occasion, because that is its proper place.
If the Bible be the only infallible rule of faith and practice ; and if
the Bible be a plain book, and if the Spirit guides the people of
God (not the external church, or body of mere professing Chris-
tians) into the knowledge of the truth, then the presumption is
invincible that what all true Christians believe to be the sense of
Scripture is its sense. The whole Christian world has believed,
and still does believe, that Christ was a true man ; that He had a
real body and a human soul. The Council of Chalcedon in formu-
lating this article of the common faith, declared that Christ was, and
is, God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever ;
that according to the one nature He is consubstantial (o/ioot'o-to?)
with us, and according to the other He is consubstantial with the
Father. There is no dispute as to the sense in which the Council
used the word nature, because it has an established meaning in
theology, and because it is explained by the use of the Latin vvord
consubstantial, and the Greek word o/ioovo-ios. Nor is it questioned
that the decisions of that Council have been accepted by the whole
Church. This doctrine of two natures in Christ the new theory
rejects. This, as we have seen, Dorner expi'essly asserts. We
have seen, also, that Ebrard says, that the idea of two natures in
the sense of two substances (Stiicke, concrete existences) is out of
the question. The Logos did not assume human nature, but hur
man attributes : He appeared in the fashion of a man. Gess, in
his luminous book, teaches over and over, that it was the substance
1 The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp. diS, 344.
438 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
of tlie Logos that was the human soul of Christ. He speaks of his
" Logos-nature ; " of the " Logos being the life, or life-principle "
of his humanity. He saj'S, in so many words,- that the soul of
Jesus was " not like that of other men, a soul created by God and
for God, but the Logos in the form of human existence." It is
consonant, lie says, " to the nature of Christ's soul, as being the
Logos existing in human form, that God should take possession of
it in a peculiar manner." This idea is the very essence of the
doctrine. For if the Logos "emptied" Himself, if He laid aside
his omnipresence and omnipotence, and became a human soul,
what need or what possibiHty remains of another newly created
soul ?
This is not Apollinarianism ; for Apollinaris taught that the
Logos supplied the place of a rational soul in the person of Christ.
He did not become such a soul, but, retaining m actu as well as in
potentia, the fulness of the divine perfections, took its place. Nor
is it exactly Eutychianism. For Eutyches said that there were
two natures before the union, and only one after it. The two
were so united as to become one. This the theory before us de-
nies, and affirms that from the beginning the Logos was the sole
rational element in the constitution of the person of our Lord. It
agrees, however, with both these ancient and Church-rejected
errors in their essential principles. It agrees with the Apollinari-
ans in saying that the Logos was the rational element in Christ ;
and it agrees with the Eutychians in saying that Christ had but one
nature.
The doctrine is in still more obvious contradiction to the decis-
ions of the Council of Constanlinople on the Monothelite contro-
versy. That Council decided that as there were two natures in
Christ, there were of necessity two wills. The new theory in assert-
ing the oneness of Christ's nature, denies that He had two wills.
The acts, emotions, and sufferings of his earthly life, were the acts,
emotions, and sufferings of the Logos. So far as Christian interest
in the doctrine is concerned, it was to get at this conclusion the
theory was adopted if not devised. It was to explain how that
more than human value belongs to the sufferings of Christ, and
more than human efficacy to his life, that so many Christian men
n'ere led to embrace the new doctrine. The Church doctrine,
hoM'ever, does not consider eitlier the sufferings or the life of Christ
as those of a mere man. He was a divine person, God manifest in
the flesh ; and his sufferings and life were those of that person.
1 The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 378.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 439
Christians can say, and always have said, with an intelh'gent and
cordial faith, that God purchased the Church with his blood. It
was because the person who died was possessed of an Eternal Spirit
that his blood cleanses from all sin.
2. The arguments from Scripture in support of the theory are
for the most part founded on the neglect of the principle so often
referred to, that anything can be predicated of the person of Christ
that can be predicated either of his human or of his divine nature.
That the one person is said to be born and to suffer and die, no
more proves that the Logos as such was born and suffered and
died, than saying of a man that he is sick or wounded proves that
his soul is diseased or injured. The same remark, of course, applies
to the exaltation and dominion of the risen Redeemer. It is the
one person who is the object of the worship of all created intelli-
gences, and to whom their obedience is due ; but this does not
prove that Christ's human nature is possessed of divine attributes.
Indeed, according to the modern doctrine of Kenosis, He has no
human nature, as already proved.
3. The theory in question is inconsistent with the clear doctrine
both of revealed and natural relio-ion concernino- the nature of God.
He is a Spirit infinite, eternal, and immutable. Any theory, there-
fore, which assumes that God lays aside his omnipotence, omnis-
cience, and omnipresence, and becomes as feeble, ignorant, and
circumscribed as an infant, contradicts the first principle of all
religion, and, if it be pardonable to say so, shocks the common
sense of men.
4. Instead of removing any diflRculties attending the doctrine of
the incarnation, it greatly increases them. According to Dorner's
view we are called upon to believe that a human soul receives
gradually increasing measures of the divine fulness, until at last it
becomes infinite. This is equivalent to saying that it ceases to exist.
It is only on the assumption that Dorner, when he says that the
essential nature of God is love, and that the communication of the
Godhead is the communication of the fulness of the divine love,
means that God is purely ethical, an attribute, but not a substance,
that we can attach any definite meaning to his doctrine. Accord-
ing to Ebrard we are required to believe that the one divine and
infinite substance of the Logos was finite and infinite ; conscious
and unconscious ; omnipresent, and confined within narrow limits
in space ; and that it was active in the exercise of omnipotence, and
as feeble as an infant at one and the same time. According to the
more common view of the subject, we are called upon to believe
440 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of christ.
tliat the infinite God, in the person of his Son, can become ignorant
and feeble, and then omniscient and abnighty ; that He can cease
to be God, and then again become God. Gess says tliat God is not
omnipotent unless He has power over Himself, power, that is, to
cease to be God. If this be true of the Son it must be true of the
Father and of the Spirit ; that is, it must be true that the Triune
Jehovah can annihilate Himself. And, then, what follows ?
5. This doctrine destroys the humanity of Christ. He is not
and never was a man. He never had a human soul or a human
heart. It was the substance of the Logos invested with a human
body that was born of the Virgin, and not a human soul. A being
without a human soul is not a man. The Saviour which this theory
offers us is the Infinite God with a spiritual body. In thus exalting
the humanity of Christ to infinitude it is dissipated and lost.
Schleiermacher.
The prevalent Christology among a numerous and distinguished
class of modern theologians, though not professedly pantheistic, is
nevertheless founded on the assumption of the essential oneness of
God and man. This class includes the school of Schleiermacher in
all its modifications not only in Germany, but also in England and
America. Schleiermacher is regarded as the most interesting as
well as the most influential theologian of modern times. He was
not and could not be self-consistent, as he attempted the reconcilia-
tion of contradictory doctrines. There are three things in his ante-
cedents and circumstances necessary to be considered, in order to
any just appreciation of the man or of his system. First, he passed
the early part of his life among the Moravians, and imbibed some-
thing of their spirit, and especially of their reverence for Christ,
who to the Moravians is almost the exclusive object of worship.
This reverence for Christ, Schleiermacher retained all his life. In
one of the discourses pronounced on the occasion of his death, it
was said, " He gave up everything that he might save Christ."
His philosophy, his historical criticism, everything, he was willing to
make bend to the great aim of preserving to himself that cherished
object of reverence and love.^ Secondly, his academic culture led
1 When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher's church. The hymns to be
sung were printed on slips of paper and distributed at the doors. They were always evan-
gelical and spiritual in an eminent degree, filled with praise and gratitude to our Redeemer.
Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in the evening with his family, would
often say, "Hush, children; let us sing a hymn of praise to Christ." Can we doubt that
he is singing tliose praises now? To whomsoever Christ is God, St. John assures us,
Christ is a Saviour.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 441
him to adopt a philosophical system whose principles and tendencies
were decidedly pantheistic. And, thirdly, he succumbed to the
attacks which rationalistic criticism had made acjainst faith in the
Bible, He could not receive it as a supernatural revelation from
God. He did not regard it as containino; doctrines which we are
bound to believe on the authority of the sacred writers. Deprived,
therefore, of the historical Christ, or at least deprived of the ordi-
nary historical basis for faith in Christ, he determined to construct a
Christology and a whole system of Christian theology from within ;
to weave it out of the materials furnished by his own religious
consciousness. He said to the Rationalists that they might expunge
what they pleased from the evangelical records ; they might demol-
ish the whole edifice of Church theology, he had a Christ and a
Christianity in his own bosom. In the prosecution of the novel
and difficult task of constructing a system of Christian theology out
of the facts of Christian experience, he designed to secure for it a
position unassailable by philosophy. Philosophy being a matter of
knowledge, and religion a matter of feeling, the two belonged to
distinct spheres, and therefore there need be no collision between
them.
Schleiermacher'' s Christology.
He assumed, (1.) That religion in general, and Christianity in
particular, was not a doctrine or system of doctrine ; not a cultus,
or a discipline ; but a life, an inward spiritual power or force.
(2.) That the true Christian is conscious of being the recipient of
this new life. (3.) That he knows that it did not originate in
himself, nor in the Church to which he belongs, because humanity
neither in the individual nor in any of its organizations is capable
of producing what is specifically new and higher and better than
itself. (4.) This necessitates the assumption of a source, or
author of this life, outside of the race of ordinary men or of hu-
manity in its regular development. (5.) Hence he assumed the
actual historical existence of a new, sinless, and absolutely perfect
man by a new creative act. (6.) That man was Christ, from whom
every Christian is conscious that he derives the new life of which
he is the subject. (7.) Christ is the Urhild, or Ideal Man, in whom
the idea of humanity is fully realized. (8.) He is nevertheless
divine, or God in fashion as a man, because man is the modus
existendi of God on the earth. In ordinary men, even in Adam,
God, so to speak, was and is imperfectl}- developed. The God-
consciousness, or God within, is overborne by our world-con-
sciousness, or our consciousness as determined by things seen and
442 PART m. Ch. ni.— the person of CHRIST.
temporal. (9.) In Christ this was not the case. In Him, without
struggle or opposition, the God-consciousness, or God within, con-
trolled his whole inwai'd and outward life. (10.) Christ's pre-
eminence over other men consisted in his absolute sinlessness and
freedom from error. Of Him it is to be said, not s[mp\y potest non
peccare^ but non potest peccare. He could not be tempted ; for
temptation supposes the possibility of sin, and the possibility of sin
supposes less than perfection. (H-) The redeeming work and
worth of Christ consists not in what He taught or in what He did,
but in what He was. What He taught and what He did may be
explained in different ways, or even explained away, but what He
was, remains, and is the one all important fact. (12.) As He was
thus perfect, thus the ideal and miraculously produced man, He
is the source of life to others. He awakens the dormant God-
consciousness in men, and gives it ascendency over the sensibility,
or sensuous element of our nature, so that believers come to be, in
the same sense, although ever in a less degree, what Christ was,
God manifest in the flesh. This being the work of Christ, and this
redeeming process being due to what He was, his resurrection,
ascension, session at the right hand of God, etc., etc., may all be
dispensed with. They may be admitted on historical grounds, good
men having testified to them as facts, but they have no religious
import or power. (13.) The new life of which Christ is the author,
which in this country is commonly denominated "his human divine
life," is the animating and constituting principle of the Church, and
it is by union with the Church that this life passes over to individ-
ual believers.
Objections to this Theory.
This is a meagre outline of Schleiermacher's Christology. His
doctrine concerning Christ is so implicated with his peculiar
views on anthropology, on theology, and on the relation of God
to the world, that it can neither be fully presented nor properly
appreciated except as an integral part of his whole system.
Gladly as Schleiermacher's theory was embraced as a refuge by
those who had been constrained to give up Christianity as a doc-
'ne, and great as have been its popularity and influence, it was
assailed from very different quarters and judged from many differ-
ent standpoints. Here it can only be viewed from the position of
Christian theology. It should be remembered that as the idealist
does not feel and act according to his theory, so the inward life of a
theologian may not be determined by his speculative doctrines.
This does not render error less objectionable or less dangerous. It
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 443
is nevertheless a fact, and enables us to condemn a system without
wounding our cliarity for its author. Schleiermacher, liowever,
was an exceptional case. As a general rule, a man's faith is the
expression of his inward life.
1. The first objection to Schleiermacher's theory is that it is not
and does not pretend to be Biblical. It is not founded upon the
objectiv^e teaciiiiigs of the Word of God. It assumes, indeed, that
the religious experience of the Apostles and early Christians was
substantially the same, and therefore involved the same truths, as
the experience of Christians of the present day. Schleiermacher
even admits that their experience was so pure and distinctly marked
as to have the authority of a standard by which other believers are
to judge of their own. But he denies that the interpretation which
they gave of their experience has normal authority for us, that is, he
says that we are not bound to believe what the Apostles believed.
His appeals to the Scriptures in support of his peculiar doctrines
are extremely rare, and merely incidental. He professes to build
up a system independent of the Bible, founded on what Christians
now find in the contents of their own consciousness.
2. The system is not what it purports to be. Schleiermacher
professed to discard speculation from the province of religion. He
undertook to construct a theory of Christianity with which philoso-
phy should have nothing to do, and therefore one against which it
could have no right to object. In point of fact his system is a mat-
ter of speculation from beginning to end. It could never have ex-
isted except as the product of a mind imbued with the principles of
German philosophy. It has no coherence, no force, and indeed no
meaning, unless you take for granted the correctness of his views
of the nature of God, of the nature of man, and of the relation of
God to the world. This objection was urged against his system by
all parties in Germany. The supernaturalists, who believed in the
Bible, charged him with substituting the conclusions of his own
philosophy for the dictates of Christian consciousness. And the
philosophers said he was true neither to his philosophy nor to his
religion. He changed from one ground to the other just as it suited
his purpose. On this subject Strauss^ says that Schleiermacher
first betrayed philosophy to theology, and then theology to philos-
ophy ; and that this half-and-halfiiess is characteristic of his whole
position. Although this was said in a spirit of unkindness, it is
nevertheless true. His speculative opinions, i. e., the conclusions
at which he arrives by the way of speculation, are the basis of his
1 Dogmatik, Tubingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 176.
444 PART m. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
whole system ; and therefore those who adopt it receive it on the
authority of reason, and not on that of revelation. It is a philo-
sophical theory and nothing more. This will become apparent as
we proceed.
Founded on Pantheistic Principles.
3. A third objection is that the system is essentially pantheistic.
This is, indeed, an ambiguous term. It is here used, however, in
its ordinary and proper sense. It is not meant that Schleiermacher
held that the universe is God, or God the universe, but that he
denied any proper dualism between God and the world, and between
God and man. He held such views of God as were inconsistent
with Theism in the true and accepted meaning of the word. That
is, he did not admit the existence of a personal, extramundane
God. This is a charge brought against his system from the begin-
ning, even by avowed pantheists themselves. They say that while
denying the existence of a personal God he nevertheless teaches
doctrines inconsistent with that denial, i. e., with what they regard
as the true view of the relation of the infinite to the finite. Theists
brought the same objection. Dr. Braniss ^ says, " Die Annahme
eines personlichen Gottes ist in diesem System unmoglich," i. g.,
" The admission of a personal God is, in this system, impossible." ^
This he proves, among other ways, by a reference to what Schleier-
macher teaches of the attributes of God, which with him are not
predicates of a subject; they tell us nothing as to what God is, they
are only forms or states of our own consciousness, as determined
by our relation to the system of things in their causal relation.
Strauss, from another standpoint, says that Schleiermacher could
never reconcile himself to the acknowledgment of a personal, extra-
mundane God. Christ was the only God he had ; and this, alas !
was little more than an ideal God ; one who had been ; but whether
He still is, he leaves undetermined, at least theoretically. Baur
presents the inconsistency of Schleiermacher in different points of
view. In one place he says that he swung to and fro between the
idealism of Kant and Fichte, and the pantheism of Spinoza and
Scheliing, which he regarded only as the different poles of the
same system (derselben Weltanschauung).^ Again he says that
the essential element of Sciileiermacher's doctrine of God is the
same inunanence of God in the world that Spinoza taught.* He
indorses the criticism of Strauss, that all the main positions of the
1 Ueher Schleiermacher^ s Glnubenlehre, ein kritischer Versuch, p. 182.
2 See Gess, Uebersicht iiber Schleiermacher'' s System, p. 185.
8 Baur's Lehre von der Dreitinit/keit, vol. iii. p. 842. ■* Ibid. p. 850.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 445
first part of Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre are intelligible only
when translated into the formulas of Spinoza, whence they were
derived ; and adds that he made no greater difference between God
and the world than Spinoza made between the natura naturans
and the natura riaturata} Schleiermacher wrote at the time when
the dispute between the Rationalists and Supernaturalists was at its
height. The one referred all events to natural causes ; the other
contended for the possibility of miracles and of a supernatural
revelation. Both parties being Theists, the Rationalists had no
ground to stand on. For if the existence of an extramundane,
personal God, the creator of the world, be admitted, it is utterly
unreasonable to deny that He may intervene w^ith his immediate
agency in the sequence of events. Schleiermacher cut the knot
by denying the difference between the natural and supernatural.
There is really no extramundane God, no other sphere of divine
activity than the world, and no other law of his action than
necessity. 2
Involves the Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
4. Schleiermacher's system ignores the doctrine of the Trinity.
With him God in the world, is the Father; God in Christ, the Son ;
God in the Church, the Spirit. All personal preexistence of Christ
is thus necessarily excluded. The Scriptures and the Church teach
that the eternal Son of God, who was with the Father from eter-
nity ; who made the worlds ; who could say, " Before Abraham
was I am," became man, being born of a woman, yet without sin.
This Schleiermacher denies. There was no Son of God, before
the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Then only, Christ began to be
as a distinct person ; He had no preexistence beyond that which is
common to all men.
5. This system makes Christ a mere man. He is constantly
represented as the Ideal man, Urbild, a perfect man. In Him the
idea of humanity is said to be fully realized. His life is said to be
one ; and that one a true human life. There was in Him but one
nature, and that nature human. Now it matters little that with
these representations Christ is said to be divine, and his life a divine
life ; for this is said on the ground that the divine is human, and
the human divine. ,God and man are one. The difference be-
1 Baur's Lehre von der Dreieiniglceit, vol. Hi. p. 851.
2 See Baur, p. 858, who quotes Zeller ( Theol. Jahrb. Bd. 1, H. 2, S. 285) as saying that
these principles, which appear everywhere in Schleiermacher's Dogmatik, contain the whole
secret of its Spinozism.
446 PART III. Ch. III. — the person OF CHRIST.
tween Christ and other men is simply one of degree. He is per-
fect, we are imperfect. He is, as Baur said, simply primus inter
pares. Christ is the Urbild or archetypal man. But " the actu-
ality of the archetypal does not go beyond our nature."^ Even
in the modified form in which his doctrine has been adopted in this
country, this feature of the system has been retained. Dr. Nevin
in his " Mystical Presence " is abundant in his assertion of the
simple humanity of Christ. He says He had not one life of the
body and another of the soul ; nor one life of his humanity and
another of his divinity. It is one life throughout, and it " is in aU
respects a true human life."^ "Christ is the archetypal man in
whom the true idea of humanity is brought to view." He " is the
ideal man." Our nature is said to be complete only in Him. This
also is the staple of the " Mercersburg Review " in all its articles
relating either to Anthropology or Soteriology. It is everywhere
assumed that God and man are one ; that divinity is the completed
development of humanity. " The glorification of Christ was the
full advancement of our human nature itself to the power of a
divine life." There is nothino; in Christ which does not belong to
humanity. Steudel therefore says of the Christology of Schleiei*-
macher that it makes Christ only " a finished man." Knapp says,
that he deifies the human and renders human the divine.^ Dorner
says, " He believed the perfect being of God to be in Christ ; and
for this reason regarded Him as the complete man. And so, vice
versa, because He is the complete man, the consciousness of God
has become a being of God in Him." * That is, because He is a
perfect man. He is God. And Strauss says, that according to
Schleiermacher the creation of man imperfect in Adam was com-
pleted in Christ ; and as Christ did not assume a true body and a
reasonable soul, but generic humanity, human nature as a generic
life is raised to the power of divinity, not in Him only but also in
the Church. The incarnation of God is not a unique manifestation
in the flesh, in the person of Christ, appearing on earth for thirty-
three years and then transferred to heaven. This, it is said, would
have been only " a sublime avatar, fantastically paraded thus long
before men," without any further effect. On the contrary, it is the
introduction of the life of God into humanity rendering it divine.
It is natural that those who thus deify themselves, should look
upon those who regard themselves as " worms of the dust," as
1 Dorner's Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. iii. p. .301.
2 The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846, p. 167.
8 Gess's Uebersicht iiber Schleiernutchers System, p. 225.
* Dorner, ut supra, ii. vol. iii. p. 194.
§ 9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 447
very poor creatures.^ The objection, however, to this system now
in hand is not so much that it deifies man, as that it makes Christ
nothing more than an ideal man. It is therefoi*e utterly at variance
with the teachings of Scripture, the fiiith of the Church, and the
intimate convictions of the people of God.
Schleiermacher' s Anthropology.
6. As the system under consideration is unscriptural in what it
teaches concerning the nature of God, and the person of Christ, it
is no less contrary to the Scriptures in what it teaches concerning
man. Indeed, the theology and anthropology of the system are
so related that they cannot be separately held. According to the
Bible and the common faith both of the Church and of the world,
man is a being created by the word of God's power, consisting of
a material body and an immaterial soul. There are, therefore, in
the constitution of his person, two distinct subjects or substances,
each with its own properties ; so that although intimately united
in the present state of being, the soul is capable of conscious exist-
ence and activity, out of the body, or separated from it. The soul
of man is therefore a distinct individual subsistence, and not the
form, or modus existendi of a general life. According to Schleier-
macher, " Man as such, or in himself, is the knowing (das Erken-
nen) of the earth in its eternal substance (Seyn) and in its ever
changing development. Or the Spirit (der Geist, God) in the way
or form in which it comes to self-consciousness in our earth." Der
Mensch an sich ist das Erkennen der Erde in Seinem ewigen Seyn
und in seinem immer wechselnden Werden : oder der Geist, der
nach Art und Weise unserer Erde zum Selbstbewusstseyn sich
gestaltet.2 gy the Mercersburg writers the idea is set forth in
rather different terms but substantially to the same effect.^ Thus
it is said, " The world in its lower view is not simply the outward
theatre or stage on which man is set to act his part as a candidate
for heaven. In the widest of its different forms of existence, it is
pervaded throughout with the power of a single life, which comes
ultimately to Its full sense and force only in the human person."
And * " The world is an organic whole which completes itself in
1 At a session of the Academic Senate of the University of Berlin, Marheinecl^e called
Neander a blockhead, and asked him, What right had he to an opinion on any philosophi-
cal question? Neander, on the other hand, said that Marheinecke's doctrine, Hegelianism, -
was to liim ein Greiiel, a disgusting horror. And no wonder, for a doctrine which makes
men tlie liighest existence form of God, is enough to shock even Satan.
■-2 Dorner, first edition, p. 488.
3 In tiie Mfvci^rsbury Jitvi^w, 1850, p. 550.
■* Page 7 of same volume.
448 PART III. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
man ; and humanity is regarded throughout as a single grand fact
which is brought to pass, not at once, but in the way of liistory,
unfolding always more its true interior sense, and reaching on to
its final consummation." Again, " It is a universal property of
life to unfold itself from within, by a self-organizing power, towards
a certain end, which end is its own realization, or in other words,
the actual exhibition and actualization in outward form of all the
elements, functions, powers, and capacities which potentially it in-
•cludes. Thus life may be said to be all at its commencement which
it can become in the end."
The theory is that there is an infinite, absolute, and universal
something, spirit, life, life-power, substance, God, Urwesen, or
whatever it may be called, which develops itself by an inward
force, in all the forms of actual existence. Of these forms man is
the highest. This development is by a necessary process, as much
so as the growth of a plant or of an animal. The stem of the tree,
its branches, foliage, and fruit, are not formed by sudden, creative
acts, accomplishing the effect, by way of miracle. All is regular,
a law-work, an uninterrupted force acting according to its internal
nature. So in the self-evolution of the spirit, or principle of life,
there is no room for special intervention, or creative acts. All
goes on in the way of history, and by regular organic development.
Here there is a fault in Schleiermacher's doctrine. He admitted
a creative, supernatural act at the creation. And as the quantum
of life, or spirit, communicated to man at first was insufficient to
carry on his development to perfection, i. e., until it realized, or
actualized all that is in that life of which he is the manifestation
(i. e., in God), there was a necessity for a new creative act, by
which in the person of Christ, a perfect man was produced. From
Him, and after Him, the process goes on naturally, by regular de-
velopment.^ The life-power, the spirit, is quantitively increased,
1 Schleiermacher (Ziveiles Sendschreiben zuLiicke; Works, edit. Berlin, 1836, first part,
vol. ii. p. 653), says: " Where the supernatural occurs with me, it is always a first; it be-
comes natural as a second. Thus the creation is supernatural, but afterwards it is a natural
process (Naturzusammenhang). So Christ is supernatural as to his beginning, but He be-
comes natural as a simple or pure human person. The same is true of the Holy Spirit and
of the Christian Church." In like manner Dr. Nevin repeatedly says, " The supernatural
has become natural." This inconsistency in Schleiermacher's system, this collision be-
tween his philosophy and his theology is dwelt upon by all his German critics. Thus
Schwarz (Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, p. 254). says, " Schleiermacher steht in seiner
Ontologie und Kosmologie, in Dem, was er iiber das Verhaltniss Gottes zur Welt in seiner
Dialektik feststellt, ganz und gar auf dem Boden einer einheitlichen und zusammen-
hiingenden Weltanschauung. Ebenso in der Lehre von der Schopfung und J'rhaltung der
Welt, wie sie die Dogmatik ausfiihrt. Gott und die Welt sind untrennbare Correlata; das
Verhilltniss Gottes zur Welt ist ein nothwendiges, stetiges, zusammenhangendes. Fiir
ausserordentliche Actionen, fur ein vereinzeltes Handeln Gottes auf die Welt ausserhalb des
§ 9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 449
and henceforth develops itself historically in the form of the
Church. The Church, therefore, consists of those to whom this
elevated principle of life has been communicated, and in whom it
develops itself until it realizes all it includes. That is, until the
essential oneness of God and man is in the Church fully realized.
There is another mode of representation current with the disci-
ples of Schleiermacher, especially in this country. Its advocates
speak of humanity as a generic life. They define man to be the man-
ifestation of this generic life in connection with a special corporeal
organization, by which it is individualized and becomes personal.
It was this generic humanity which sinned in Adam, and thence-
forth was corrupt in all the individual men in whom it was mani-
fested. It was this generic humanity that Christ assumed into
personal union with his divinity, not as two distinct substances, but
so united as to become one generic human life. This purified hu-
manity now develops itself, by an inward force in the Church,
just as from Adam generic humanity was developed in his poster-
ity. All this, however, differs only in words from Schleiermacher's
simpler and more philosophic statement. For it is still assumed as
the fundamental idea of the gospel, that God and man are one.
This generic humanity is only a form of the life of God. And as
to its sinning in Adam, and being thenceforth corrupt, sin and
corruption are only imperfect development. God, the universal
life principle, as Dr. Nevin calls it, so variously manifested in the
different existences in this world, is imperfectly or insufficiently
manifested in man generally, but perfectly in Christ, and through
Him ultimately in like perfection in his people. Christ, therefore,
according to Dorner, is a universal person. He comprises in Him-
self the whole of humanity. All that is separately revealed in
others is summed up in Him. In this system "Der Mittelpunkt,"
says Schwarz, "christlicher Wahrheit, der christologische Kern der
ganzen Dogmatik ist die Goschel-Dorner'sche monstrose Vorstel-
lung von der Allpersonlichkeit Christi, die ihm als dem Urmen-
schen zukommt. Es ist ' die Zusammenfassung des ganzen geglie-
Naturgesetzes Oder gegen dasselbe ist nirgends ein Ort Aber — es ist zuzugeben, —
diese die philosophische Griindanscbauung b:ldeiide Itnmanenz wird von dem Theologen
Schleiermacher nicht Strang innegehalten, das aus derOntologie und Kosmologie verbannte
Wunder dringt durch die Christologie wieder ein. Die Person Christi in ihrer religios=
sittlichen Absolutheit ist ein Wunder, eine Ansnahme vom Naturgesetz, sie stehet einzig
da. Ihr Eintreten in die Menschheit erfodert frofz aller Anschliessungen nach riickwartz
wie nach vorwiirtz einen besondern gtittlichen Anstoss, sie ist aus der geschichtlichen Ent-
wickelung nicht hervorgegangen und nicht zu begreifen. Und dieser iibernatiiriiche An-
stoss ist es, welcher, so selir er auch wieder in die NatUrlichkeit einlenkt, doch mit dem
religios=moralischen Wunder auch die Miiglichkeit der daniit zusammenhiingenden phy-
sischen Wunder offen lasst und so den ganzen Weltzusammenhang durchbricht."
VOL. II. 29
450 PART m. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
derten Systems der natiirlichen Gaben der Menschheit.'"^ " The
middle point of Christian truth, tlie kernel of dogmatic theology
is Goschel's and Dorner's monstrous idea of the All-personality
of Christ which belongs to Him as the Urmensch or archetypal
man. He comprehends within Himself all the diversified forms or
systems of the natural gifts of mankind." Goschel and Dorner,
adds Schwarz, were driven to this view because they conceded to
their opponent Strauss, that the Absolute could only reveal itself
in the totality of individuals ; and therefore as the Absolute was in
Chx'ist, he must embrace all individuals, because (the Gattungs-
begrift") the true and total idea of humanity, the ideal man, or
Urmensch, was revealed in Christ. The objection is constantly
urged by his German critics, as Baur, Strauss, and Schwarz, that
Schleiermacher admits that the Absolute is revealed in perfection
in the totality of individuals, and yet is revealed perfectly in Christ,
which according to Schleiermacher's own philosophy they pro-
nounce to be a contradiction or impossibility.'''
The design of the preceding paragraj)hs is simply to show the
unscriptural character of Schleiermacher's Christology in all its
modifications, because it is founded on a view of the nature of man
entirely at variance with the Word of God. It assumes the one-
ness of God and man. It takes for granted that fully developed
humanity is divine; that Christ in being the ideal, or perfect man,
is God.
Schleiermacher's Theory perverts the Plan of Salvation.
7. It need hardly be remarked that the plan of salvation accord-
ing to Schleiermacher's doctrine is entirely different from that re-
vealed in the Bible and cherished by the Chui'ch in all ages. It
is, in Germany at least, regarded as a rejection of the Church
system, and as a substitute for it, and only in some of its forms as
a reconciliation of the two, as to what is deemed absolutely essen-
tial. The system in all its forms rejects the doctrines of atonement
or satisfaction to the justice of God ; of regeneration and sanctifica-
tion by the Holy Spirit; of justification as a judicial or forensic act;
of faith in Christ, as a trusting to what He has done for us, as dis-
tinguished from what He does in us ; in short, of all the great dis-
tinctive doctrines not merely of the Reformation but of the Catholic
faith. By many of the followers of Schleiermacher these doctrines
are rejected in so many words ; by others the terms are more or
1 Schwarz, Geschtchte der neuesfen Theologie, p. 260.
2 Baur's Cht-istliche Lehre von der Veisolmung, p. 621-624.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 451
less retained, but not in their received and established meaning.
For the Scriptural system of salvation, another is substituted.
Christ saves us not by what He teaches, or by what He does, but
by what He is. He infuses a new principle of life into the Church
and into the world. The universal Hfe as communicated to, or re-
vealed in Adam, has been struggling on, imperfectly developed in
all his descendants. In Christ a new influx of this life is commu-
nicated to, or infused into the veins of humanity. From this as a
new starting point, humanity enters on another stage of develop-
ment, which is to issue in the full actualization of the divine life in
the form of humanity. As from Adam human nature was devel-
oped from within by an inward force in a regular historical pro-
cess ; so from Christ, there is the same historical development from
within. All is natural. There is nothing supernatural but the
initial point ; the first impulse, or the first infusion of the divine
life. There is no place in the system for the work of the Holy
Spirit. Indeed, the very existence of the Holy Spirit as a personal
being is by Schleiermacher expressly denied. By the Spirit he
means the common life of the Church, that is, the divine life, or
God as revealed in the Church. As we derive from Adam a
quantitively deficient, and in that sense corrupt, nature, and have
nothing more to do with him ; so from Christ we receive a larger
measure of life, spirit, or divine nature, and have nothing more to
do with Him. His whole redeeming work is in the new leaven
he has introduced into humanity, which diffuses itself in the way
of natural development. This, as Baur says, comes after all to
little more than the impression which his* character has made on
the world. He draws a parallel between Schleiermacher and Kant,
between the " Glaubenslehre " of the former, and " Die Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft " of the latter ; the
clear rationalism of the one and the mystical obscurity of the other.
Both admit that there is a good and a bad principle. Both say
that man's redemption consists in the triumph of the good principle.
Both say that the deliverance from evil or the work of redemp-
tion, is a purely natural process. Both refer the success of the
struggle to the influence of Christ. The one says that He imparts
to men a new life, the other says that He awakens the dormant
good that is already in man's nature. Everything admits of a sim-
ple and of a mystical explanation.^ In every great epoch some one-
1 The writer was once (iiltini^ with Tholuck in a public garden, when the latter said, "I
turn my eyes in the opposite direction, and still I am conscious of your presence. How is
that?" The reply was, "You know the fact that I am here; and that knowledge pro-
duces the state of mind, you call a consciousness of my presence." Tholuck good naturedljr
452 PART III. Ch. III. — the person OF CHRIST.
man not only impresses his character and infuses his spirit into the
men of his generation, but also transmits his influence from age to
age. The whole body of Lutherans are what they arc because
Luther was what he was. The spirit of Ignatius Loyola is just as
active in the Jesuits of our day as it was in his own person. The
Scotch are what they are because of John Knox ; and the Wesley-
ans owe not only their doctrines and discipline but their wdiole ani-
mus and character to John Wesley. To this category do the mer-
ciless German critics of Schleiermacher reduce his theory of the
redemption of man by Jesus Christ. It is a matter of personal
influence like that of other great men. This will be regarded by
his disciples as a most degrading and unjust view of his doctrine.
And it doubtless is unjust. For whatever may be true of his mere
speculative system, he unquestionably in his heart regarded Christ
as infinitely exalted above other men, and as the proper object of
adoration and trust.
This Vermittelungstheologie (the mediating-theology), as it is
called in Germany, is confessedly an attempt to combine the con-
clusions of modern speculation with Christian doctrine, or rather
with Christianity. It is an attempt to mix incongruous elements
which refuse to enter into combination. The modern speculative
philosophy in all its forms insists on the denial of all real dualism ;
God and the world are correlata, the one supposes the other; with-
out the world there is no God ; creation is the self-evolution or
self-manifestation of God ; and is therefore necessary and eternal.
God can no more be without the world, than mind without thought.
The preservation, progress, and consummation of the world is by a
necessary process of development, as in all the forms of life. There
is no possibility of special intervention, on the part of God. Mira-
cles whether spiritual or physical are an absurdity and an impossi-
bility.^ So is any agency of God in time, or otherwise than as a
general life-power. This precludes the efficacy of prayer except
as to its subjective influence. Schleiermacher shared in this horror
of the supernatural, and this rejection of all miracles. In the case
of Christ, he was forced to admit "a new creative act." But he
apologized for this admission by representing it as only the comple-
rejoined, " 0 how stupid that is. Don't you believe that there is an influence which streams
forth from me to you and from you to me ? " The only answer was, " Perhaps so." Of all
the genial, lovely, and loving men whom the writer in the course of a long life has met,
Tholuck stands among the very first. The writer derived more good from him than from
all other sources combined during his two years sojourn in Europe.
1 " Eigentliche Mirakel anzunehmen, d. h. Unterbrechungen oder Aufhebungen der
Naturordnung, dazu wird kein philosophischer Denker sich herablassen." J. H. Fichte, by
Schwarz, p. 319.
§9.] MODERN FORMS OF THE DOCTRINE. 453
tion of the original act of creation, and by saying that it was only
for a moment, and that all thenceforth was natural.
Schwarz, himself a great admirer, although not a disciple of
Schleiermacher, characterizes this " mediating theology " as an
utter failure. It is neither one thing nor the other. It is neither
true to its speculative principles, nor true to Christianity. It
virtually rejects the Church system, yet endeavours to save Chris-
tianity by adopting at least its phraseology. Schwarz says it is a
system of " phrases ; " which endeavours to heal the wounds of
orthodoxy by words which seem to mean much, but which may be
made to mean much or little as the reader pleases. It speaks con-
stantly of Christianity as a life, as the life of God, as developing
itself organically and naturally, not by supernatural assistance, but
by an inward life-power, as in other cases of organic development.
It assumes to rise to the conception of the whole world as an or-
ganism, in which God is one of the factors ; the world and God
differing not in substance or life, but simply in functions. It con-
cedes to " speculation " that the fundamental truth of philosophy
and of Christianity is the oneness of God and man. Man is God
living in a certain form, or state of development. While " the
mediating theology " concedes all this, it nevertheless admits of a
miraculous or supernatural beginning of the world and of the per-
son of Christ, and thus gives up its whole philosophical system.
At least the members of one wing of Schleiermacher's school are
thus inconsistent; those of the other are more true to their princi-
ples.
As Christian theology is simply the exhibition and illustration
of the facts and truths of the Bible in their due relations and pro-
portions, it has nothing to do with these speculations. The "me-
diating theology " does not pretend to be founded on the Bible. It
does not, at least in Germany, profess allegiance to the Church
doctrine. It avowedly gives up Christianity as a doctrine to save
it as a life. It is founded on " speculation " and not upon author-
ity, whether of the Scriptures or of the Church. It affords there-
fore no other and no firmer foundation for our faith and hope, than
any other philosophical system ; and that, as all history proves, is a
foundation of quick-sand, shifting and sinking from month to
month and even from day to day. Schleiermacher has been dead
little more than thirty years, and already there are eight or ten.
different classes of his general disciples who differ from each other
almost as much as from the doctrines of the Reformation. Twesten
and Ullmann, Liebner and Thomasius, Lange and Alexander
454 PART in. Ch. IIL — the person of CHRIST.
Schweizer, are wide apart, each having his own philosophical solvent
of the doctrines of the Bible, and each producing a different re-
siduum.
The simple, sublime, and saving Christology of the Bible and
of the Church universal is : " That the eternal Son of God be-
came man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul,
and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct na-
tures and one person forever."
CHAPTER IV.
THE MEDIATORIAL WORK OF CHRIST,
§ 1. Christ the only Mediator.
According to the Scriptures the incarnation of the etex'nal Son
of God was not a necessary event arising out of the nature of God.
It was not the cuhninating point in the development of humanity.
It was an act of voluntary humiliation. God gave his Son for
the redemption of man. He came into the world to save his peo-
ple from their sins ; to seek and save those who are lost. He
took part in flesh and blood in order, by death, to destroy him wlio
had the power of death, that is the devil, and to deliver those*
who through fear of death (i. e., through apprehension of the wrath
of God), were all their lifetime subject to bondage. He died the
just for the unjust that He might bring us near to God. Such is
the constant representation of the Scriptures. The doctrine of the
modern speculative theology, that the incarnation would have oc-
curred though man had not sinned, is, therefore, contrary to the
plainest teachings of the Bible. Assuming, however, that fallen
men were to be redeemed, then the incarnation was a necessity.
There was no other way by which that end could be accomplished.
This is clearly taught in the Scriptures. The name of Christ is
the only name whereby men can be saved. If righteousness could
have been attained in any other way, Christ, says the Apostle, is
dead in vain. (Galatians ii. 21.) If the law (any institution or
device) could have given life, verily righteousness should have been
by the law. (Galatians iii. 21.)
As the design of the incarnation of the Son of God was to rec-
oncile us unto God, and as reconciliation of parties at variance is
a work of mediation, Christ is called our mediator. As reconcilia-
tion is sometimes effected by mere intercession, or negotiation, the
person who thus effectually intercedes may be called a mediator.
But where reconciliation involves the necessity of satisfaction for sin
as committed against God, then he only is a mediator who makes
an atonement for sin. As this was done, and could be done by
Christ alone, it follows that He only is the mediator between God
456 PART III. Ch. IV. — mediatorial WORK OF CHRIST.
and man. He is our peace-maker, who reconciles Jews and Gen-
tiles unto God in one body by the cross. (Ephesians ii. 16.) To
us, therefore, there is one mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy ii. 5.)
The Romish Church regards priests, and saints, and angels, and
especially the Virgin Mary, as mediators, not only in the sense of
intercessors, but as peace-makers without whose intervention rec-
onciliation with God cannot be attained. This arises from two
erroneous principles involved in the theology of the Church of
Rome. The first concerns the office of the priesthood. Romanists
teach that the benefits of redemption can be obtained only through
the intervention of the priests. Those benefits flow through the
sacraments. The sacraments to be available must be administered
by men canonically ordained. The priests offer sacrifices and
grant absolution. They are as truly mediators, although in a sub-
ordinate station, as Christ himself. No man can come to God ex-
cept through them. And this is the main idea in mediation in the
Scriptural sense of the word.
The other principle is involved in the doctrine of merit as held
by Romanists. According to them, good works done after regen-
eration have real merit in the sight of God. It is possible for the
people of God not only to acquire a degree of merit sufficient for
their own salvation, but more than suffices for themselves. This,
on the principle of the communion of saints, may be made available
for others. The saints, therefore, are appealed to, to plead their
own merits before the throne of God as the ground of the pardon
or deliverance of those for whom they intercede. This according
to the Scriptures is the peculiar work of Christ as our mediator ;
assigning it to the saints, therefore, constitutes them mediators.
As the Christian minister is not a priest, and as no man has any
merit in the sight of God, much less a superabundance thereof, the
-whole foundation of this Romish doctrine is done away. Christ is
our only mediator, not merely because the Scriptures so teach, but
also because He only can and does accomplish what is necessary
for our reconciliation to God ; and He only has the personal quali-
fications for the work.
§ 2. Qualifications for the Work.
What those qualifications are the Scriptures clearly teach.
1. He must be a man. The Apostle assigns as the reason why
Christ assumed our nature and not the nature of angels, that He
came to redeem us. (Hebrews ii. 14-16.) It was necessary that
§2.] QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE WORK. 457
He should be made under the law which we had broken ; that He
should fulfil all righteousness ; that He should suffer and die ; that
He should be able to sympathize in all the infirmities of his people,
and that He should be united to them in a common nature. He
who sanctifies (purifies from sin both as guilt and as pollution) and
those who are sanctified are and must be of one nature. Therefore
as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part
of the same. (Hebrews ii. 11-14.)
2. The Mediator between God and man must be sinless. Under
the law the victim offered on the altar must be without blemish.
Christ, who was to offer Himself unto God as a sacrifice for the
sins of the world, must be Himself free from sin. The High
Priest, therefore, who becomes us. He whom our necessities de-
mand, must be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.
(Hebrews vii. 26.) He was, therefore, " without sin." (Hebrews
iv. 15 ; 1 Peter ii. 22.) A sinful Saviour from sin is an impos-
sibility. He could not have access to God. He could not be a
sacrifice for sins ; and He could not be the source of holiness and
eternal life to his people. This sinlessness of our Lord, how-
ever, does not amount to absolute impeccability. It was not a non
potest peccare. If He was a true man He must hare been ca-
pable of sinning. That He did not sin under the greatest provo-
cation ; that when He was reviled He blessed ; when He suf-
fered He threatened not ; that He was dumb, as a sheep before
its shearers, is held up to us as an example. Temptation implies
the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of his person it was
impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was unreal and
without effect, and He cannot sympathize with his people.
3. It was no less necessary that our Mediator should be a divine
person. The blood of no mere creature could take away sin. It
was only because our Lord was possessed of an eternal Spirit that
the one offering of Himself has forever perfected them that believe.
None but a divine person could destroy the power of Satan and de-
liver those who were led captive by him at his will. None but He
who had life in Himself could be the source of life, spiritual and
eternal, to his people. None but an almighty person could control
all events to the final consummation of the plan of redemption, and
could raise the dead; and infinite wisdom and knowledge are requi-
site in Him who is to be judge of all men, and the head over all to
his Church. None but one in whom dwelt all the fulness of the
Godhead could be the object as well as the source of the religious
life of all the redeemed.
458 PART III. Ch. IV. —MEDIATORIAL WORK OF CHRIST.
These qualifications for the office of mediator between God and
man are all declared in the Scriptures to be essential ; they all
met in Christ ; and they all were demanded by the nature of the
work which He came to perform.
As it was necessary that Christ should be both God and man in
two distinct natures and one person, in order to effect our redemp-
tion, it follows that his mediatorial work, which includes all He did
and is still doing for the salvation of men, is the work not of his
human to the exclusion of his divine nature, nor of the latter to
the exclusion of the former. It is the woi'k of the ©eav^pwjros, of
the God- mail. Of the acts of Christ, as already remarked, some
are purely divine, as creation, preservation, etc. ; others purely
human, ^. e., those which the ordinary powers of man are not only
adequate to accomplish, but in which only human faculties were
exercised ; and, thirdly, those which are mixed, which belong to
the whole person. As speaking in man is a joint exercise of the
mind and of the body, so the mediatorial work iu Christ is the joint
work of his divinity and humanity. Each nature acts agreeably to
its own laws. When a man speaks, the mind and body concur in
the production of the effect, each according to its nature. So when
our Lord spake, the wisdom, truth, and authority with M'hich He
spake were due to his divinity ; the human form of the thoughts
and their articulation were what they were in virtue of the func-
tions of iiis human nature. So with all his redemptive acts. As
the mind of man concurs in the endurance of the sufferings of the
body according to the nature of mind, so the divinity of Christ
concurred with the sufferings of his human nature according to the
nature of the divinity.
On this subject the schoolmen made the following distinctions :
" (1.) Est 6 ivepydv, Agejis sen Principium quod agit, quod est sup-
positum seu persona Christi. (2.) To ivepy-qriKov seu Principium
formale quo agit ; illud per quod agens, seu persona Christi opera-
tur, duas scilicet naturae, quarum unaquaeque citra ullum confusi-
onem operatur. (3.) 'Ei'tpycta seu operatio qua? pendet a principio
quo, et naturam sui principil refert, ut sit divina, si princij)ium quo
sit divina natura, humana vero, si sit humanitas. (4.) Eiepyjj/xa,
seu oLTTOTiXeafjia, quod pendet a principio quod, estque opus exter-
num quod mediationem vocamus Ita unum est agens prin-
cipale, nim. persona Christi, et unum dTroTcXccr/xa seu opus mediato-
rium ; sed operatur per duas naturas, ut duo principia, unde fluunt
duse ei/epyet'at seu operatioues ad unum illud opus concurrentes." ^
1 Tiirrettin, locus xiv. quajst. ii. 3, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. p. 3-35. He quotes
from Bamasc. lib. Ii. 4, orth. fid. c. 13, and refers to Leo's 10th Epistle to Flavian.
§3.] THE THREEFOLD OFFICE OF CHRIST. 459
All Christ's acts and sufferings in the execution of his mediato-
rial work were, therefore, the acts and sufferings of a divine person.
It was the Lord of glory who was crucified ; it was the Son* of
God who poured out his soul unto death. That this is the doctrine
of the Scriptures is plain, (1.) Because they attribute the efficacy
and power of his acts, the truth and wisdom of his words, and the
value of his sufferings to the fact that they were the acts, words,
and sufferings of God manifested in the flesh. They are predicated
of one and the same person who from the beginning was with God
and was God, who created all things and for whom all things were
made and by whom all things consist. (2.) If the mediatorial
work of Christ belongs to his human nature exclusively, or, in other
words, if He is our mediator only as man, then we have only a
human Saviour, and all the glory, power, and sufficiency of the
Gospel are departed. (3.) From the nature of the work. The re-
demption of fallen men is a work for which only a divine person is
competent. The prophetic office of Christ supposes that He pos-
sessed "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;" his sacerdotal
office required the dignity of the Son of God to render his work
available ; and none but a divine person could exercise the dominion
with which Christ as mediator is intrusted. Only the Eternal Son
could deliver us from the bondage of Satan, and from the death of
sin, or raise the dead, or give eternal life, or conquer all his and our
enemies. We need a Saviour who was not only holy, harmless,
undefiled, and separate from sinners, but who also " is higher than
the heavens."
§ 3. The Threefold Office of Christ.
It has long been customary with theologians to exhibit the medi-
atorial work of Christ under the heads of his prophetic, sacerdotal,
and kingly offices. To this division and classification it has been
objected by some that these offices are not distinct, as it was the
duty of the priests as well as of the prophets to teach ; by others,
that the sacerdotal office of Christ was identical with the prophetic,
that his redemption was effected by teaching. This method, how-
ever, has not only the sanction of established usage and obvious
convenience, but it is of substantive importance, and has a firm
Scriptural basis. (1.) In the Old Testament the several offices
were distinct. The prophet, as such, was not a priest; and the
king was neither priest nor prophet. Two of these offices were at
times united in the same person under the theocracy, as Moses was
both priest and prophet, and David prophet and king. Neverthe-
less "the offices were distinct. (2.) The Messiah, during the
460 PART in. Ch. IV. — mediatorial work of CHRIST.
theocracy and in the use of language as tlien understood, was
predicted as prophet, priest, and king. Moses, speaking of Christ,
said, " The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from
the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me." It was abun-
dantly taught that the coming deliverer was to discharge all the
duties of a prophet as a revealer of the will of God. He was to be
the great teacher of righteousness : a light to lighten the Gentiles
as well as the glory of his people Israel. No less clearly and fre-
quently was it declared that He should be a priest. " Thou art a
priest forever after the order of Melchizedec." He was to be a
priest upon his throne. (Zechariah vi. 13.) He was to bear the
sins of the people, and make intercession for transgressors. His
royal office is rendered so prominent in the Messianic prophecies
that the Jews looked for Him only as a king. He was to reign
over all nations. Of his kingdom there was to be no end. He
was to be the Lord of lords and the King of kings. (3.) In
the New Testament the Redeemer, in assuming the office of the
promised Messiah, presented Him to the people as their prophet,
priest, and king ; and those who received Him at all received
Him in all these offices. He applied to Himself all the prophe-
cies relating to the Messiah. He referred to Moses as predict-
ing the Messiah as a prophet ; to David, as setting Him forth as a
priest, and to Daniel's prophecies of the kingdom which He came
to establish. The Apostles received Him as the teacher sent from
God to reveal the plan of salvation and to unfold the future destiny
of the Church. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews
it is said, " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these
last days spoken unto us by his Son." In that Epistle the priest-
hood of Christ is elaborately set forth, and its superiority in every
respect to the priesthood of the old economy strenuously insisted
upon. In like manner the New Testament is full of instruction
concerning the grounds, the nature, the extent, and the duration
of his kingdom. He is constantly designated as Lord, as our abso-
lute proprietor and sovereign. Nothing, therefore, can be plainer
than that as the Old Testament prophets predicted that the Mes-
siah should be a prophet, priest, and king, so the New Testa-
ment writers represent the Lord Jesus as sustaining all these
offices. (4.) That this is not a merely figurative representation is
plain from the fact that Christ exercised all the functions of a prophet,
of a priest, and of a king. He was not simply so called, but the
work which He actually performed included in perfection all that
§3.] THE THREEFOLD OFFICE OF CHRIST. 461
the ancient prophets, priests, and kings performed in a lower sphere
and as an adumbration of Christ's more perfect work. (5.) We as
fallen men, ignorant, guilty, polluted, and helpless, need a Saviour
who is a prophet to instruct us; a priest to atone and to make inter-
cession for Ub ; and a king to rule over and protect us. And the
salvation which we receive at his hands includes all that a prophet,
priest, and king in the highest sense of those terms can do. We
are enlightened in the knowledge of the truth ; we are reconciled
unto God by the sacrificial death of his Son ; and we are delivered
from the power of Satan and introduced into the kingdom of God ;
all of which supposes that our Redeemer is to us at once prophet,
priest, and king. This is not, therefore, simply a convenient clas-
sification of the contents of his mission and work, but it enters into
its very nature, and must be retained in our theology if we would
take the truth as it is revealed in the Word of God.
Under the old economy the functions of these several offices were
not only confided to different persons, no one under the theocracy
being at once prophet, priest, and king ; but when two of these
offices were united in one person they were still separate. The
same man might sometimes act as prophet and sometimes as priest
or king ; but in Christ these offices were more intimately united.
He instructed while acting as a priest, and his dominion extending
over the soul gave freedom from blindness and error as well as
from the power of sin and the dominion of the devil. The gospel
is his sceptre. He rules the world by truth and love. " Tria ista
officia," saysTurrettin, "ita in Christo conjunguntur, ut non solum
eorum operationes distinctas exerat, sed eadem actio a tribus simul
prodeat, quod rei admirabilitatem non parum auget. Sic Crux
Christi, quae est Altare sacerdotis, in quo se in victimam Deo
obtulit, est etiam schola prophetae, in qua nos docet mysterium
salutis, unde Evangelium vocatur verbum crucis, et Trophaeum
regis, in qua scil. triumphavit de principatibus et potestatibus.
Col. ii. 15. Evangelium est lex pi'ophetae. Is. ii. 2, 3, Sceptrum
regis, Ps. ex. 2, Gladius sacerdotis, quo penetrat ad intimas cordis
divisiones, Heb. iv. 12, et Altare, cui imponi debet sacrificium fidei
nostras. Ita Spiritus, qui ut Spiritus, sapientiae est effectus pro-
phetias, ut Spiritus consolationis est fructus sacerdotii, ut Spiritus
roboris et gloriae est regis donum." "
1 Locus XIV. qusest. v. 13, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 347, 348.
CHAPTER V.
PROPHETIC OFFICE.
§ 1. Nature of the Prophetic Office.
According to Scriptural usage a prophet is one who speaks for
another. In Exodus vii. 1, it is said, " See, I have made thee a
God to Pharaoh : and Aaron thy brother sliall be thy prophet."
Moses was to be the authoritative source of the communication,
Aaron the organ of communication. This is the relation of the
prophet to God. God communicates, the prophet announces the
message which he has received. In Exodus iv. 16, it is said of
Aaron in relation to Moses, " He shall be to thee instead of a
mouth." And in Jeremiah xv. 19, it is said of the prophet, " Thou
shalt be as my mouth." In the inauguration of a prophet, or in
constituting a man the spokesman of God, it is said, " I will put my
words in his mouth ; and he siiall speak unto them all that I shall
command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not
hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will
require it of him." (Deuteronomy xviii. 18, 19.) A prophet,
therefore, is one who speaks in the name of God. He must, how-
ever, be the immediate organ of God. In one sense every one who
reads or preaches the word of God may be said " to speak in his
name." The trutlis which he utters rest upon the authority of
God ; they are his words which the preacher is the organ of an-
nouncing to the people. Ministers, however, are not prophets. A
broad distinction is made both in the Old and New Testaments be-
tween prophets and teachers. The former were inspired, the latter
were not. Any man receiving a revelation from God, or inspired
in the communication of it, is, in the Scriptures, called a prophet.
Hence all the sacred writings are called prophetic. The Jews
divided their Scriptures into the law and the prophets. Tiie law, or
pentateuch, was written by Moses, who was confessedly a prophet,
and the other class, including all the historical, devotional, and pro-
phetic portions (commonly so called) is also the work of prophets,
i. e., of inspired men. The prediction of the future was only an
incidental part of the prophet's work, because some of the com-
munications which he received had reference to future events.
§ 2.] HOW CHRIST EXECUTES THE OFFICE. 463
When, therefore, the Messiah was predicted as a prophet it was
predicted that He should be the great organ of God in communi-
cating his mind and will to men. And when our Lord appeared
on earth it was to speak the words of God. " The word which
ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." (John xiv.
24.) " Jesus of Nazareth which was a prophet mighty in deed and
word." (Luke xxiv. 19.)
§ 2. How Christ executes the Office of a Prophet,.
In the execution of his prophetic office, Christ is revealed to us,
(1.) As the eternal Word, the Aoyos, the manifested and manifest-
inof Jehovah. He is the source of all knowledcje to the intelliorent
universe, and especially to the children of men. He was, and is,
the light of the world. He is the truth. In Him dwell all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; and from Him radiates all the
light that men receive or attain. (2.) This, although independent
of his official work as prophet in the economy of redemption, is its
necessary foundation. Had He not in Himself the plenitude of
divine wisdom He could not be the source of knowledge, and es-
pecially of thut knowledge which is eternal life to all his people.
Under the old dispensation, or before his adv^ent in the flesh, He
made known God and his purposes and will, not only by personal
manifestations of Himself to the patriarchs and prophets, but also
by his Spirit, in revealing the truth and will of God, in inspiring
those appointed to record these revelations, and in illuminating the
minds of his people, and thus bringing them to the saving knowl-
edge of the truth. (3.) While on earth He continued the exercise
of his prophetic office by his personal instructions, in his discourses,
parables, and expositions of the law and of the prophets ; and in all
that He taught concerning his own person and work, and concern-
ing the progress and consummation of his kingdom. (4.) Since
his ascension He performs the same office not only in the fuller
revelation of the gospel made to the Apostles and in their inspira-
tion as infallible teachers, but also in the institution of the ministry
and constantly calling men to that office, and by the influences of
the Holy Ghost, who cooperates with the truth in every human
heart, and renders it effectual to the sanctification and salvation
of his own people. Thus from the beginning, both in his state of
humiliation and of exaltation, both before and after his advent in
the flesh, does Christ execute the office of a prophet in revealing
to us by his Woixl and Spirit the will of God for our salvation.
CHAPTER VI.
PRIESTLY OFFICE.
§ 1. Christ is truly^ not figuratively, a Priest.
The meaning of the word priest and the nature of the office are
to be determined, first, by general usage and consent ; secondly,
by the express declarations of the Scriptures ; and, thirdly, by the
nature of the functions peculiar to the office. From these sources
it can be shown that a priest is, (1.) A man duly appointed to act
for other men in things pertaining to God. The idea which lies at
the foundation of the office is, that men, being sinners, have not
liberty of access to God. Therefore, one, either having that right
in himself, or to whom it is conceded, must be appointed to draw
near to God in their behalf. A priest, consequently, from the
nature of his office, is a mediator. (2.) A priest is appointed to
offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. His function is to reconcile men
to God ; to make expiation for their sins ; and to present their per-
sons, acknowledgments, and offerings to God. (3.) He makes in-
tercession for the people. Not merely as one man may pray for
another, but as urging the efficacy of his sacrifice and the authority
of his office, as grounds on which his prayers should be answered.
Much depends upon the correctness of this definition. It would
amount to little to admit Christ to be a priest, if by that term we
mean merely a minister of religion, or even one by whose interven-
tion divine blessings are secured and conveyed. But if by a priest
be meant all that is included in the above statement, then the
relation in which Christ stands to us, our duties to Him, his relation
to God, and the nature of his work, are all thereby determined.
That the above definition is correct, and that Christ is a priest
in the true sense of the term, is evident,
1. From the general usage of the word and the nature of the
office among all nations and in all ages of the world. Men have
everywhere and at all times been conscious of sin. In that con-
sciousness are included a sense of guilt (or of just exposure to the
displeasure of God), of pollution, and of consequent unworthiness
to approach God. Their consciences, or the laws of their moral
§ 1.] CHRIST A TRUE PRIEST. 465
nature, have ever taught them the necessity of the expiation of
guilt by a satisfaction of divine justice, and their own inability and
unwortliiness to make any adequate atonement, or to secure by their
own eflForts the favour of God. They have, therefore, ever sought
for some one or some class of men to act in their behalf; to do for
them what they knew must be done, and that which they were
convinced they could not do for themselves. Hence the appoint-
ment of priests, who were always regarded as men whose business
it was to propitiate God by expiatory sacrifices, by oblations, and
by prayers. To say that a priest is merely a teacher of religion is
to contradict the universal testimony of history.
2. The sense in which Christ is a priest must be determined by
the use of the word and by the nature of the office under the old
dispensation. In the Old Testament a priest was a man selected
from the people, appointed to act as their mediator, drawing nigh
to God in their behalf, whose business it was to offer expiatory sac-
rifices, and to make intercession for offenders. The people were
not allowed to draw near to God. The High Priest alone could
enter within the veil ; and he only with blood which he offered for
himself and for the sins of the people. All this was both symbolical
and typical. What the Aaronic priests were symbolically, Christ
was really. What they in their office and services typified was
fulfilled in Him. They wei'e the shadow. He the substance.
They taught how sin was to be taken away, He actually removed
it. It would be to set the Scriptures at naught, or to adopt prin-
ciples of interpretation which would invalidate all their teaching, to
deny that Christ is a priest in the Old Testament sense of the term.
3. We have in the New Testament an authoritative definition
of the word, and an exhibition of the nature of the office. In He-
brews V. 1, it is said, " Every high priest .... is ordained for
men (inrep avdptaTrojv, for their benefit and in their place), in things
pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for
sins." Here all the ideas above insisted upon are distinctly rec-
ognized. A priest is a man appointed for others, to draw near to
God, and to offer sacrifices. Such a priest Christ is declared to
have been.
4. Christ is not only called a priest in Hebrews, but the Apostle
throuo-hout that Epistle proves, (a.) That He had all the qualifica-
tions for the office. (6.) That He was appointed by God. (c.) That
He was a priest of a higher order than Aaron, (df.) That his
priesthood superseded all others, (e.) That He performed all the
functions of the office, — mediation, sacrifice, and intercession.
VOL. II. 30
466 PART in. Ch. VI.— priestly office.
(/.) That such was the efficacy of his sacrifice that it needs not to
be repeated. By the one offering of Himself He hath obtained
eternal redemption for us.
5. The effects or benefits secured by the work of Christ are those
which flow from the exercise of the priestly office in our behalf.
Those benefits are, (a.) Expiation of our guilt ; (6.) The propitia-
tion of God ; and (c.) Our consequent reconciliation with Him,
whence flow all the subjective blessings of spiritual and eternal life.
These are benefits which are not secured by teaching, by moral in-
fluence, by example, or by any inward change wrought in us. Christ,
therefore, is truly a priest in the full Scriptural sense of the term.
§ 2. Christ our only Priest.
This follows from the nature and design of the office. (1.) No
man, save the Lord Jesus Christ, has liberty of access unto God.
All other men, being sinners, need some one to appi'oach God on
their behalf. (2.) No other sacrifice than his could take away sin.
(3.) It is only through Him that God is propitious to sinful men :
and (4.) It is only through Him that the benefits which flow from
the favour of God are conveyed to his people.
The priests of the Old Testament were, as before remarked,
only symbols and types of the true priesthood of Christ. Their
sacrifices could not purify the conscience from the sense of sin
They availed only to the purifying of the flesh. They secured
reconciliation with God only so far as they were regarded as repre-
senting the real sacrifice of Christ as the object of faith and ground
of confidence. Hence, as the Apostle teaches, they were offered
continually, because, being ineffectual in themselves, the people
needed to be constantly reminded of their guilt and of their need
of the more effectual sacrifice predicted in their Scriptures.
If the Old Testament priests were not really priests, except
typically, much less are ministers of the gospel. When among
Protestants any class of ministers are called priests, the word is the
substitute for presbyter, for which it is constantly interchanged.
It stands for Trpeo-^uTcpos and not for lepcus. (It is defined, Greek,
TTpeaf^vTipos^ elder ; Latin, presbyter; Spanish, presbitero ; French,
pretre ; Anglo Saxon, preost ; Dutch and German, priester ; Dan-
ish, praest.) Among Romanists it is not so. With them the min-
ister is really a priest. (1.) Because he mediates between God
and the people. (2.) Because he assumes to offer propitiatory
sacrifices. (3.) Because in absolution he effectually and authori-
tatively intercedes, rendering the sacrifice for sin effectual in its
§2.] CHRIST OUR ONLY PRIEST. 467
application to individuals, which is the essential element in the in-
tercession of Christ. The Roman priests are mediators, because it
is taught that the sinner cannot for himself draw near to God
through Christ and obtain pardon and grace, but can secure those
blessings only through their intervention. They are sacrificers,
because they assume to offer the real body and blood of Christ to
God, as an expiation for the sins of the people. And they are
intercessors, not as one man may pray for another, but as having
the power to forgive sins. They have therefore the power of h'fe
and death ; the keys of the kingdom of heaven. They bind, and
no man can loose ; they loose, and no man can bind. This is the
highest power which man has ever assumed over his fellow-men,
and when recognized, reduces the people to a state of the most
absolute subjection. No greater benefit was rendered the world by
the Reformation than the breaking of this iron yoke. This was
done by demonstrating, from Scripture, that the ministers of relig-
ion under the gospel are not priests in the official sense of the term.
It was shown,
1. That the word priest, lepev?, is never once applied to them in
the New Testament. Every appropriate title of honour is lavished
upon them. They are called the bishops of souls, pastors, teach-
ers, rulers, governors, the servants or ministers of God ; stewards
of the divine mysteries ; watchmen, heralds, but never priests.
As the sacred writers were Jews, to whom nothing was more fa-
miliar than the word priest, whose ministers of religion were con-
stantly so denominated, the fact that they never once use the word,
or any of its cognates, in reference to the ministers of the gospel,
whether apostles, presbyters, or evangelists, is little less than mirac-
ulous. It is one of those cases in which the silence of Scripture
speaks volumes.
2. No priestly function is ever attributed to Christian ministers.
They do not mediate between God and man. They are never said
to oifer sacrifices for sins ; and they have no power as intercessors
which does not belong to every believer.
3. All believers are priests in the only sense in which men are
priests under the gospel. That is, all have liberty of access to
God through Christ. He has made all his people kings and priests
unto God.
4. This Romish doctrine is derogatory to the honour of Christ.
He came to be the mediator between God and man ; to make sat-
isfaction for our sins, to secure for us pardon and reconciliation
with God. To suppose that we still need the priestly intervention
of men, is to assume that his work is a failure.
468 PART III. Ch. VI. — priestly OFFICE.
5. The sacred writers expressly teach what this doctrine denies.
They teach tiiat men have everywhere free access to Christ, and
through Him unto God ; tliat faith in Him secures an interest in
all the benefits of his redemption, and that, therefore, a thief on the
cross, a prisoner in a dungeon, a solitai'y believer in his own cham-
ber is near to God, and secure of his acceptance, provided he calls
on the name of the Lord. To deny this, to teach the necessity of
the intervention or ministration of men, to secure for us the salva-
tion of our souls, is to contradict the plainest teachings of the Word
of God.
6. This doctrine contradicts the intimate convictions of the peo-
ple of God in all ages. They know that they have through Christ
and by the Spirit free access unto God. They are thus taught by
the Holy Ghost. They avail themselves of this liberty in spite of
all men can do. They know that the doctrine which subjects them
to the priesthood as the only authorized dispensers of grace and
salvation, is not of God ; and that it brings the souls of men into
the most slavish bondage.
7. All the principles on which the doctrine of the priesthood of
the Christian clergy rests are false. It is false that the ministry
are a distinct class from the people, distinguished from them by
supernatural gifts, conveyed by the sacrament of orders. It is
false that the bread and wine are transmuted into the body and
blood of Christ. It is false that the Eucharist is a propitiatory
sacrifice applied for the remission of sins and spiritual benefits,
according to the intention of the officiating priest. Christ, there-
fore, as He is the only mediator between God and man, is the only
and all-sufficient High Priest of our profession.
§ 3. Definition of Terms.
Christ, it is said, executeth the office of a priest, in his once
offi?ring up Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and recon-
cile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us. Ex-
piation, propitiation, reconciliation, and intercession are the several
aspects under which the work of Christ as a priest, is presented in
the Word of God.
Before attempting to state what the Scriptures teach in reference
to these points, it will be well to define the terms which are of con-
stant occurrence in theological discussions of this subject.
§3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 469
The Word Atonement.
The word atonement is often used, especially in this country, to
designate the priestly work of Christ. This word does not occur
in the English version of the New Testament except in Romans
V. 11, where it is interchanged with " reconciliation " as the trans-
lation of the Greek word KaraAAay?;. In the Old Testament it fre-
quently occurs. The objections to its use to express the work of
Christ are, —
1. Its ambiguity. To atone is properly to be, or cause to be,
at orie. It is so used in common language as well as in theology.
In this sense to atone is to reconcile ; and atonement is reconcilia-
tion. It, therefore, expresses the effect, and not the nature of
Christ's work. But it is also, in the second place, used to express
that by which the reconciliation is effected. It then means satis-
faction, or compensation. It answers in our version to the He-
brew word "153; which in relation to the offence or guilt, means to
expiate. Thus in Leviticus v. 16, it is said, if a man commit an
offence, vbv "i?P!' 1^33^^, the priest shall make atonement for him ;
i. g., shall expiate, or make satisfaction for his offence. So in Ex.
xxxii. 30 ; Lev. iv. 26 ; Num. vi. 11. In reference to the person
of the offender, it means to reconcile by means of expiation, to pro-
pitiate God in his behalf. See Ex. xxx. 15 ; Lev. iv. 20 ; xvi. 6.
Ezekiel xlv. 17, "It shall be the prince's part to give burnt-
offerings-, ... he shall prepare the sin-offering . . . 1V2 "i???
bsn:c;'"n"*5 to make reconciliation for the house of Israel." Thus
often elsewhere. While the verb to atone thus means to expiate
•and to reconcile by expiation, the substantive means, either the re-
conciliation itself, or the means by which it is effected. This latter
sense is not a Scriptural usage of the word, but is very common in
theological writings. Thus when we speak of the atonement of
Christ, of its necessity, efficacy, application, or extent, we mean
Christ's work, what He did to expiate the sins of men. This ambig-
uity of the word necessarily gives rise to more or less confusion.
2. Another objection to its general use is that it is not suffi-
ciently comprehensive. As commonly used it includes only the
sacrificial work of Christ, and not his vicarious obedience to the
divine law. The atonement of Christ is said to consist of his suffer-
ings and death. But his saving work includes far more than his
expiatory sufferings.
3. A third objection is that this use of the word atonement is
a departure from the established usage of the Churches of the
470 PART in. Ch. VI.— priestly office.
Reformation. It is important to adhere to old words if we would
adhere to old doctrines.
Satisfaction.
The word satisfaction is the one which for ages has been gen-
erally used to designate the special work of Christ in the. salvation
of men. With the Latin theologians the word is " satisf actio, ''^
with the German writers, " Genugthun," its exact etymological
equivalent, " the doing enough." By the satisfaction of Christ is
meant all He has done to satisfy the demands of the law and justice
of God, in the place and in behalf of sinners. This word has the
advantage of being precise, comprehensive, and generally accepted,
and should therefore be adhered to. There are, however, two
kinds of satisfaction, which as they differ essentially in their nature
and effects, should not be confounded. The one is pecuniary or
commercial ; the other penal or forensic. When a debtor pays
the demand of his creditor in full, he satisfies his claims, and is
entirely free from any further demands. In this case the thing paid
is the precise sum due, neither more nor less. It is a simple matter
of commutative justice ; a quid pro quo ; so much for so much.
There can be no condescension, mercy, or grace on the part of a
creditor receiving the payment of a debt. It matters not to him
by whom the debt is paid, whether by the debtor himself, or by
some one in his stead ; because the claim of the creditor is simply
upon the amount due and not upon the person of the debtor. In
the case of crimes the matter is different. The demand is then
upon the offender. He himself is amenable to justice. Substitu-
tion in human courts is out of the question. The essential point
in matters of crime, is not the nature of the penalty, but who shall
suffer. The soul that sins, it shall die. And the penalty need not
be, and very rarely is, of the nature of the injury inflicted. All
that is required is that it should be a just equivalent. For an as-
sault, it may be a fine ; for theft, imprisonment ; for treason, ban-
ishment, or death. In case a substitute is pi-ovided to bear the
penalty in the place of the criminal, it would be to the off'ender a
matter of pure grace, enhanced in proportion to the dignity of the
substitute, and the greatness of the evil from which the criminal is
delivered. Another important difference between pecuniary and
penal satisfaction, is that the one ipso facto liberates. The moment
the debt is paid the debtor is free, and that completely. No delay
can be admitted, and no conditions can be attached to his deliv-
erance. But in the case of a criminal, as he has no claim to have
§3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 471
a substitute take his place, if one be provided, the terms on which
the benefits of his substitution shall accrue to the principal, are
matters of agreement, or covenant between the substitute and the
magistrate who represents justice. The deliverance of the offen-
der may be immediate, unconditional, and complete ; or, it may be
deferred, suspended on certain conditions, and its benefits gradu-
ally bestowed.
As the satisfaction of Christ was not pecuniary, but penal or
forensic ; a satisfaction for sinners, and not for those who owed a
certain amount of money, it follows, —
1. That it does not consist in an exact quid pro quo, so much for
so much. This, as just remarked, is not the case even among men.
The penalty for theft is not the restitution of the thing stolen, or
its exact pecuniary value. It is generally something of an entirely
different nature. It may be stripes or Imprisonment. The pun-
ishment for an assault is not the infliction of the same degree of
injury on the person of the offender. So of slander, breach of
trust, treason, and all other criminal offences. The punishment
for the offence is something different from the evil which the
offender himself inflicted. All that justice demands in penal satis-
faction is that it should be a real satisfaction, and not merely
something graciously accepted as such. It must bear an adequate
proportion to the crime committed. It may be different in kind,
but it must have inherent value. To fine a man a few pence for
wanton homicide would be a mockery ; but death or imprisonment
for life would be a real satisfaction to justice. All, therefore, that
the Church teaches when it says that Christ satisfied divine justice
for the sins of men, is that what He did and suffered was a real
adequate compensation for the penalty remitted and the benefits
conferred. His sufferings and death were adequate to accomplish
all the ends designed by the punishment of the sins of men. He
satisfied justice. He rendered it consistent with the justice of God
that the sinner should be justified. But He did not suffer either m
kind or degree what sinners would have suffered. In value, his
sufferings infinitely transcended theirs. The death of an eminently
good man would outweigh the annihilation of a universe of insects.
So the humiliation, sufferings, and death of the eternal Son of God
immeasurably transcended in worth and power the penalty which
a world of sinners would have endured.
2. The satisfaction of Christ was a matter of grace. The Father
was not bound to provide a substitute for fallen men, nor was the
Son bound to assume that office. It was an act of pure grace that
4T2. PART m. Ch. VI.— priestly office.
God arrested the execution of the penalty of the law, and consented
to accept the vicarious sufferings and death of his only begotten
Son. And it was an act of unparalleled love that the Son con-
sented to assume our nature, bear our sins, and die, the just for
the unjust, to bring us near to God. AH the benefits, therefore,
which accrue to sinners in consequence of the satisfaction of Christ
are tb them pure gratuities ; blessings to which in themselves they
have no claim. They call for gratitude, and exclude boasting.
3. Nevertheless, it is a matter of justice that the blessings which
Christ intended to secure for his people should be actually bestowed
upon them. This follows, for two reasons : first, they were prom-
ised to Him as the reward of his obedience and sufferings. God
covenanted with Christ that if He fulfilled the conditions imposed^
if He made satisfaction for the sins of his people, they should be
saved. It follows, secondly, from the nature of a satisfaction. If
the claims of justice are satisfied they cannot be again enforced.
This is the analogy between the work of Christ and the payment
of a debt. The point of agreement between the two cases is not
the nature of the satisfaction rendered, but one aspect of the effect
produced. In both cases the persons for whom the satisfaction is
made are certainly freed. Their exemption or deliverance is in both
cases, and equally in both, a matter of justice. This is what the
Scriptures teach when they say that Christ gave Himself for a ran-
som. When a ransom is paid and accepted, the deliverance of the
captive is a matter of justice. It does not, however, thereby cease
to be to the captives a matter of grace. They owe a debt of grati-
tude to him who paid the ransom, and that debt is the greater when
the ransom is the life of their deliverer. So in the case of the sat-
isfaction of Christ. Justice demands the salvation of his people.
That is his reward. It is He who has acquired this claim on the
justice of God; his people have no such claim except through Him.
Besides, it is of the nature of a satisfaction that it answers all the
ends of punishment. What reason can there be for the infliction
of the penalty for which satisfaction has been rendered ?
4. The satisfaction of Christ being a matter of covenant between
the Father and the Son, the distribution of its benefits is determined
by the terms of that covenant. It does not ipso facto liberate.
The people of God are not justified from eternity. They do not
come into the world in a justified state. They remain (if adults)
in a state of condemnation until they believe. And even the ben-
efits of redemption are granted gradually. The believer receives
more and more of them in this life, but the full plenitude of bless-
§ 3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 473
ings is reserved for the life to come. All these are facts of Scrip-
ture and of experience, and they are all explained by the nature
of the satisfaction rendered. It is not the payment of a debt, but a
matter of agreement or covenant. It seemed good to the parties
to the covenant of redemption that matters should be so arranged.
Penalty.
The words penal and penalty are frequently misunderstood. By
the penalty of a law is often understood a specific kind or degree
of suffering. The penalty of the divine law is said to be eternal
death. Therefore if Christ suffered the penalty of the law He must
have suffered death eternal ; or, as others say. He must have en-
dured the same kind of sufferings as those who are cast off from
God and die eternally are called upon to suffer. This difficulty is
sometimes met by the older theologians by saying, with Burman,^
"Tenendum, passionem banc Chrlsti, licet pcenarum nostrarum vim
omnem quoad intensionem quasi exhauserit, non tamen aBternitatem
earum tulisse : temporis enim infinitatem, infinita personse dignitas
recompensavit." Turrettin says,'"^ " Si Christus mortem seternam
non tulit sed temporalem tantum et triduanam, non minus tamen
solvit quod a nobis debebatur quoad infinitatem poense. Quia si non
fuit infinita quoad durationem, fuit tamen talis gequivalenter quoad
valorem, propter personae patientis infinitam dignitatem, quia non
fuit passio meri hominis, sed veri Dei, qui suo sanguine Ecclesiam
acquisivit, Act. xx. 28, ut quod deest finite tempori, suppleatur per
personaB divinae conditionem, quae passioni temporali pondus addit
infinitum."
Another answer equally common is that Christ suffered what
the law denounced on sinners, so far as the essence of the penalty
is concerned, but not as to its accidents. These accidents greatly
modify all punishments. To a man of culture and refinement, who
has near relations of the same class, imprisonment for crime is an
unspeakably more severe infliction than it is to a hardened and
degraded offender. The essence of the penalty of the divine law
is the manifestation of God's displeasure, the withdrawal of the
divine favour. This Christ suffered in our stead. He bore the
wrath of God. In the case of sinful creatures, this induces final
and hopeless perdition, because they have no life in themselves. In
the case of Christ, it was a transient hiding of his Father's face.
With sinners, this being cast off from God is necessarily attended
1 Synopsis Theohgm, V. xvii. 8, edit. Geneva, 1678, vol. ii. p. 89.
2 Instilutio, loc. xiv. qu. xi. 28; Works, edit. Edinburgh, 1817, vol. ii. p. 384.
474 PART m. ch. VI. — priestly office.
by remorse, despair, and rebellious resistance and enmity. All
these are mere circumstantial accidents, not attending the sufferings
of Christ. Thus Turrettin says, " Vere tulit poenas quas damnati
tulissemus, non quidam tamdiu, non omnes, non in eo loco, non cum
illis effectis ; sed tamen sensit justam Dei iram." Again, ^ "Licet
desperatio et fremitus conjungantur cum poenis damnatorum ; non
sequitur Christum ferendo posnas peccato debitas debuisse illis ex-
poni, quia non sunt de essentia poenae, prout a judice infligitur, vel a
sponsore sanctissimo fertur ; sed habent rationemadjuncti, quod earn
comitatur, propter vitium subjecti patientis."
A third and more satisfactoiy answer to the objection in question
is that the words penal and penalty do not designate any particular
kind or degree of suffering, but any kind or any degree which is
judicially inflicted in satisfaction of justice. The word death, as
used in Scripture to designate the wages or reward of sin, includes
all kinds and degrees of suffering inflicted as its punishment.' By
the words penal and penalty, therefore, we express nothing con-
cerning the nature of the sufferings endured, but only the design
of their infliction. Suffering without any reference to the reason
of its occurrence is calamity ; if inflicted for the benefit of the
sufferer, it is chastisement ; if for the satisfaction of justice, it is
punishment. The very same kind and amount of suffering may in
one case be a calamity ; in another a chastisement ; in another a
punishment. If a man is killed by accident, it is a calamity. If he
is put to death on account of crime and in execution of a judicial
sentence, it is punishment. A man may be imprisoned to protect
him from unjust violence. His incarceration is then an act of
kindness. But if he be imprisoned in execution of a judicial sen-
tence, then it is punishment. In both cases the evil suffered may
be precisely the same. Luther was imprisoned for years to save
him from the fury of the Pope. When, therefore, we say that
Christ's sufferings were penal, or that He suffered the penalty of
the law, we say nothing as to the nature or the degree of tiie pains
which He endured. We only say, on the one hand, that his suffer-
ings were neither mere calamities, nor chastisements designed for
his own benefit, nor merely dogmatic, or symbolical, or exemplary,
or the necessary attendants of the conflict between good and evil ;
and, on the other hand, we affirm that they were designed for the
satisfaction of justice. He died in order that God might be just
in justifying the ungodly.
It is not to be inferred from this, however, that either the kind
1 Loc. XIV. qu. xi. 29, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. p. 384.
§3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 475
or degree of our Lord's sufferings was a matter of indifference.
We are not autliorized to say, as has so often been said, that one
drop of his blood would have been sufficient to redeem the world.
This may express a pious sentiment, but not a Scriptural truth.
He would not have suffered as He did, nor to the degree He did,
unless there had been an adequate reason for it. There must be
some proportion between the evil endured, and the benefit to be
secured. If a man were saved from death or bondage by a prince's
l)aying a shilling, it would be absurd to call that either a satisfac-
tion, or a ransom. There must be enough of self-sacrifice and
suffering to give dignity and inherent value to the proffered atone-
ment. While, therefore, the value of Christ's sufferings is due
mainly to the dignity of his person, their character and intensity
are essential elements in their worth. Nevertheless, their character
as penal depends not on their nature, but on their design.
Vicarious.
By vicarious suffering or punishment is not meant merely suffer-
ings endured for the benefit of others. The sufferings of martyrs,
patriots, and philanthropists, although endured for the good of
the Church, the country, or of mankind, are not vicarious. That
word, according to its signification and usage, includes the idea of
substitution. Vicarious suffering is suffering endured by one per-
son in the stead of another, i. e., in his place. It necessarily sup-
poses the exemption of the party in whose place the suffering is
endured. A vicar is a substitute, one who takes the place of an-
other, and acts in his stead. In this sense, the Pope assumes to be
the vicar of Christ on earth. He claims and assumes to exercise
Chi'ist's prerogatives. What a substitute does for the person whose
place he fills, is vicarious, and absolves that person from the neces-
sity of doing or suffering the same thing.^ When, therefore, it is
said that the sufferings of Christ Avere vicarious, the meaning is
that He suffered in the place of sinners. He was their substitute.
He assumed their obligation to satisfv justice. What He did and
suffered precluded the necessity of their fulfilling the demands of
the law in their own persons. This idea of substitution, and of
vicarious obedience and suffering, pervades all the religions of the
world ; which proves that it has its foundation in the nature of
man. It is sanctioned in the Word of God, and incorporated in
1 Even in medicine the word retains its proper meaning. " A vicarious secretion, is a
secretion from one part instead of another." It ceases to be vicarious when the former fail*
to stop the latter.
476 PART m. Ch. VI.— priestly office.
the doctrines therein revealed. And this proves that the idea is
not merely human, but divine ; that it is in accordance, not only
with the reason of" man, but with the reason of God. It is an un-
fairness to use words in a sense inconsistent with their established
meaning ; to say, for example, that the sufferings of Christ were
vicarious, when nothing more is meant than that his sufferings
inured to the good of mankind. This may be said of any suffering
for the public good ; even of the sufferings of criminals ; and of the
finally impenitent. Christ's sufferings were vicarious in the sense
in which the death of one man is vicarious who dies in the place
of another to save him from a deserved penalty ; in the sense in
which the death of the Old Testament sacrifice, which was taken
in lieu of the death of the transgressor, was vicarious. And this
is the sense in which we are bound to use the word.
G-uilt.
The word guilt, as has been repeatedly remarked, expresses the
relation which sin bears to justice, or, as the older theologians said,
to the penalty of the law. This relation, however, is twofold.
First, that which is expressed by the words criminality and ill-
desert, or demerit. This is inseparable from sin. It can belong
to no one who is not personally a sinner, and it permanently at-
taches to all who have sinned. It is not removed by justification,
much less by pardon. It cannot be transferred from one person to
the other. But secondly, guilt means the obligation to satisfy
justice. This may be removed by the satisfaction of justice per-
sonally or vicariously. It may be transferred from one person to
another, or assumed by one person for another. When a man
steals or commits any other offence to which a specific penalty is
attached by the law of the land, if he submit to the penalty, his
guilt in this latter sense is removed. It is not only proper that he
should remain without further molestation by the state for that
offence, but justice demands his exemption from any further pun-
ishment. It is in this sense that it is said that the guilt of Adam's
sin is imputed to us ; that Christ assumed the guilt of our sins ; and
that his blood cleanses from guilt. This is very different from de-
merit or pei'sonal ill-desert. The ordinary theological sense of the
word guilt is well expressed by the German word Schuld, which
means the responsibility for some wrong, or injury, or loss ; or, the
obligation to make satisfaction. It, therefore, includes the mean-
ing of our words guilt and debt. " Ich bin niclit schuldig," means,
I am not answerable. I am not bound to make satisfaction. " Des
§3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 477
Todes schuldig seyn," means to be under the obligation to suffer
death as a penalty. " Des hoUischen Feuers schuldig," means to
be in justice bound to endure the fires of hell. So in the Lord's
prayer, " Vergieb uns unsere Schulden," remit to us the obligation
to satisfy for our sins. The German theologians, old and new,
therefore, speak of the guilt (Schuld) of the offender being trans-
ferred in the sacrificial services of the Old Testament, from the
offender to the victim. " Die Schuld," says Ebrard,^ " kann, wie
wir wissen,nur so hinweggethan werden, dass sie wirklich gestraft,
d. h. gesiihnt wird ; entweder muss der Siinder selbst die Strafe
tragen, oder es muss sich ein stellvertretendes Opfer ausfindig
machen lassen, welches die Schuld zu iibernehmen, die Strafe zu
tragen und alsdann die dadurch erworbene Schuldfreiheit oder
Gerechtigkeit dem Menschen wieder mitzutheilen vermag." That
is, " Guilt, as we know, can be removed only by punishment.
Either the sinner himself must bear the punishment, or a substitute
must be provided to assume the guilt, and bear the punishment,
and thus freedom from guilt, or righteousness, be secured for the of-
fender." This is the fundamental idea of atonement or satisfaction,
which lies at the basis of all sacrifices for sin, the world over, and
especially those of the Mosaic economy. And this is the essential
idea of the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ as it is presented
in the Scriptures from the beginning to the end, and which is so
inwrought into the faith and experience of the people of God that
it has withstood all manner of assaults from within and from with-
out, from philosophizing believers and from avowed unbelievers.
It assumes that guilt, Schuld, reatus, in the sense of the obligation
of the sinner to satisfy divine justice, may be removed, may be
transferred from one person to another, or assumed by one in the
place of another. In perfect consistency with this doctrine it is
maintained that guilt or reatus in the sense of demerit or ill-desert
does not admit of removal or transfer.
Medemption.
Redemption sometimes means simple deliverance ; but properly,
and always in its application to the work of Christ, it means deliv-
erance by purchase. This is plain because it is a deliverance not
by authority, or power, or teaching, or moral influence, but by
blood, by the payment of a ransom. This is the etymoloo'ical
signification of the word a-noXvTpwa-L^, which is from Xvrpov, a ransom^
and that from Xvw, to purchase, e. g.^ the freedom of a slave or cap-
tive.
1 Dogmatik, § 401 ; edit. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ii. p. 159.
478 PART m. Ch. VI. — priestly office.
Expiation and Propitiation.
Expiation and propitiation are correlative terms. The sinner, or
his guilt is expiated ; God, or justice, is propitiated. Guilt must,
from the nature of God, be visited with punishment, which is the
expression of God's disapprobation of sin. Guilt is expiated, in the
Scriptural representation, covered, by satisfaction, i. g., by vicari-
ous punishment. God is thereby rendered propitious, i. e., it is
now consistent with his nature to pardon and bless the sinner.
Propitious and loving are not convertible terms. God is love. He
loved us while sinners, and before .satisfaction was rendered. Sat-
isfaction or expiation does not awaken love in the divine mind. It
only renders it consistent with his justice that God should iexercise
his love towards transgressors of his law. This is expressed by the
Greek verb IXdaKOfiai, propitium facio. " To reconcile oneself to
any one by expiation." ' That by which this reconciliation is
effected is called tAaa/xos or iXaa-r-qpiov. The effect produced is that
God is tAaos. God is good to all, fidl of pity and compassion to
all, even to the chief of sinners. But he is iXaos only to those
for whose sins an expiation has been made. That is, according to
the Old Testament usage, " whose sins are covered." " To cover
sin," "IS?, is never used to express the idea of moral purification, or
sanctification, but always that of expiation. The means by which
sin is said to be covered, is not reformation, or good works, but
blood, vicarious satisfaction. This in Hebrew is ~i^-, that which
covers. The combination of these two ideas led the LXX. to call
the cover of the ark tAao-TT^piov, that which covered or shut out the
testimony of the law against the sins of the people, and thus ren-
dered God propitious. It was an IXaa-rqpiov, however, only because
sprinkled with blood. Men may philosophize about the nature of
God, his relation to his creatures, and the terms on which He will
forgive sin, and they may never arrive at a satisfactory conclusion;
but when the question is simply. What do the Scriptures teach on
this subject ? the matter is comparatively easy. In the Old Tes-
tament and in the New, God is declared to be just, in the sense
that his nature demands the punishment of sin ; that therefore there
can be no remission without such punishment, vicarious or per-
sonal ; that the plan of salvation symbolically and typically exhib-
ited in the Mosaic institution, expounded in the prophets, and
clearly and variously taught in the New Testament, involves the
substitution of the incarnate Son of God in the place of sinners,
1 Robinson, Lexicon of the New TeslamenI, in verbo.
§3.] DEFINITION OF TERMS. 479
who assumed their obligation to satisfy divine justice, and that He
did in fact make a full and perfect satisfaction for sin, bearing the
penalty of the law in their stead ; all this is so plain and undenia-
ble that it has always been the faith of the Church and is admitted
to be the doctrine of the Scriptures by the leading Rationalists of
our day. It has been denied only by those who are outside of the
Church, and therefore not Christians, or by those who, instead of
submitting to the simple word of God, feel constrained to explain
its teachings in accordance with their own subjective convictions.
CHAPTER VII.
SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Statement of the Doctrine.
The Symbols of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches agree
entirely in their statement of this doctrine. In the " Augsburg
Confession " ^ it is said, Christus " sua morte pro nostris peccatis
satisfecit." In the "Apology for the Augsburg Confession "^ it is
more fully expounded, " Christus, quia sine peccato subiit pcenam
peccati, et victima pro nobis factus est, sustulit illud jus legis, ne
accuset, ne damnet hos qui credunt in ipsum, quia ipse est propiti-
atio pro eis, propter quam nunc justi reputantur. Cum autem j^sti
reputentur, lex non potest eos accusare, et damnare, etiamsi re ipsa
legi non satisfecerint." " Mors Christi non est solum satisfactio
pro culpa, sed etiam pro seterna morte." ^ " In propitiatore hsec
duo concurrunt : Primum, oportet exstare verbum Dei, ex quo
certo sciamus, quod Deus velit misereri et exaudire invocantes per
hunc propitiatorem. Talis exstat de Christo promissio
Alterum est in propitiatore, quod merita ipsius proposita sunt, ut,
quse pro aliis satisfacerent, qusB aliis donentur imputatione divina,
ut per ea, tanquam propriis meritis justi reputentur, ut si quis ami-
cus pro amlco solvit aes alienum, debitor alieno merito tanquam
proprio liberatur. Ita Christi merita nobis donantur, ut justi repu-
temur fiducia meritorum Christi, cum in eum credimus, tanquam
propria merita haberemus."* In the " Form of Concord " this doc-
trine is not only presented but elaborately expounded and vindi-
cated. It is said,^ " Justitia ilia, quso coram Deo fidei, aut creden-
tibus, ex mera gratia imputatur, est obedientia, passio et resurrectio
Christi, quibus ille legi nostra causa satisfecit, et peccata nostra
expiavit. Cum enim Christus non tantum homo, verum Deus et
homo sit, in una persona indivisa, tam non fuit legi subjectus, quam
non fuit passioni et morti (ratione suas personse), obnoxius, quia
1 I. iv. 2; Hase, Libri SymboUci, 3d edit. p. 10. 2 m. 58; Jbid. p. 93.
8 VI. 43; Jbid. p. 190. * ix. 17, 19; Ibid. p. 226.
« III. 14,15; Ibid. p. 684, 685.
§1.] STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE. 481
Dominus legis erat. Earn ob causam ipsius obedientia (non ea
tantum, qua patri paruit in tota sua passione et morte, verum etiam,
qua nosti'a causa sponte sese legi subjecit, eamque obedientia ilia
sua implevit) nobis ad justitiam imputatur, ita, ut Deus propter
totam obedientiam (quam Christus agendo et patiendo, in vita et
morte sua, nostra causa Patri suo coelesti prsestitit) peccata nobis
remittat, pro bonis et justis nos reputet, et salute aeterna donet."
The Reformed Confessions are of like import. The Second
Helvetic Confession ^ says, " Christus peccata mundi in se recepit
et sustulit, divinaeque justiti^e satisfecit. Deus ergo propter solum
Christum passum et resuscitatum, propitius est peccatis nostris, nee
ilia nobis imputat." The Belgic Confession says,'-^ "Credimus,
Jesum Christum summum ilium sacerdotem esse, .... qui se nos-
tro nomine coram Patre ad placandam ipsius iram cum plena satis-
factione obtulit, sistens se ipsum super altare crucis, et sanguinem
suum pretiosum ad purgationem peccatorum nostrorum profudit."
The Heidelberg Catechism says,^ " Deus vult justitiae satisfieri ;
quocirca necesse est, vel per nos, vel per alium satisfaciamus." In
the following answers it is taught that man cannot satisfy the jus-
tice of God for himself, nor any creature for him ; that it was
necessary that He who, as our substitute, would make satisfac-
tion in our stead, should be both God and man. In answer to the
question,* Why it was necessary that Christ should die, it is said,
" Propterea quod justitiae et veritati Dei nullo alio pacto pro nos-
tris peccatis potuit satisfieri, quam ipsa morte filii Dei." The Hei-
delberg Catechism being the standard of doctrine in all the Dutch
and German Reformed churches in Europe and America, is one
of the most important and authoritative of the symbols of the Ref-
ormation.
In the "Formula Consensus Helvetica"'' it is said, "Ita Chris-
tus vice electorum obedientia mortis suas Deo patri satisfecit, ut in
censum tamen vicariae justitias et obedientiae illius, universa ejus,
quam per totius vitae suae curriculum legi .... sive agendo sive
patiendo praestitit, obedientia vocari debeat Rotundo asserit
ore Spiritus Dei, Christum sanctissima vita legi et justitiae divinae
pro nobis satisfecisse, et pretium illud, quo empti sumus Deo, non
in passionibus duntaxat, sed tota ejus vita legi conformata col-
locat."
The "Westminster Confession"^ says, "The Lord Jesus, by
1 XV.; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, p. 494.
2 XXI. ; Ibid. p. 373. 8 xii. Jbid. p. 432.
4 XL.; J/jid. p. 439. 5 xv. 32, 33, Ibid. pp. 734, 735.
' Chap. viii. § 5.
VOL. It. 31
482 PART m. Cii. VIL — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
his perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which He through
the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the
justice of his Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but
an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those
whom the Father hath given unto Him."
This, however, is not a doctrine peculiar to the Lutheran and
Reformed churches ; it is part of the faith of the Church universal.
The Council of Trent says,^ "Jesus Christus, cum essemus inimici,
pi'opter nimiam caritatem qua dilexit nos, sua sanctissima passlone
in ligno crucis nobis justificationem meruit, et pro nobis Deo patri
satisfecit." "Christus Jesus, qui pro peccatis nostris satisfecit."^
The Roman Catechism says,^ " Hoc in passione, et morte Filius
Dei salvator noster spectavit, ut omnium setatum peccata redimeret
ac deleret, et pro eis Patri abunde, cumulateque satisfaceret."
" Prima satisfactio et praestantissima ilia est, qua pro scelerum
nostrorum ratione, etiam si Deus summo jure nobiscum velit agere,
quidquid a nobis debeatur, cumulate persolutum est. Haec vero
ejusmodi esse dicitur, quae nobis Deum propitium et placatum red-
didit, eamque uni Christo domino acceptam ferimus, qui in cruce,
pretio pro peccatis nostris soluto, plenissime Deo satisfecit."*
§ 2. Tlie Intrinsic Worth of Chrisfs Satisfaction.
The first point is that Christ's work was of the nature of a satis-
faction, because it met and answered all the demands of God's law
and justice against the sinner. The law no longer condemns the
sinner who believes in Christ. Those, however, whom the infin-
itely holy and strict law of God does not condemn are entitled
to the divine fellowship and favour. To them there can be no
condemnation. The work of Christ was not, therefore, a mere
substitute for the execution of the law, which God in his sovereign
mercy saw fit to accept in lieu of what the sinner was bound to
render. It had an inherent worth which rendered it a perfect
satisfaction, so that justice has no further demands. It is here as
in tiie case of state criminals. If such an offender suffers the
penalty which the law prescribes as the punishment of his oflfence
he is no longer liable to condemnation. No further punishment can
justly be demanded for that offence. This is what is called the
perfection of Christ's satisfaction. It perfectly, from its own intrin-
sic worth, satisfies the demands of justice. This is the point meant
^ Sess. vi. cap. 7; Streitwolf, Libri SymboUci, Gottingen, 18i6, pp. 24, 25.
2 Sess. xi\'. cap. 8; Jbid. p. 63.
8 I. V. 11; Ibid. pp. 155, 156.
* II. V. 53 (Ixxxvii. or 63), Ibid. p. 401.
§2.] ITS INTRINSIC WORTH. 483
to be illustrated when the work of Christ is compared in Scripture
and in the writings of theologians to the payment of a debt. The
creditor has no further claims when the debt due to him is fully paid.
This perfection of the satisfaction of Christ, as already remarked,
is not due to his having suffered either in kind or in degree what
the sinner would have been required to endure ; but principally to
the infinite dignity of his person. He was not a mere man, but God
and man in one person. His obedience and suflPerings were there-
fore the obedience and sufferings of a divine person. This does not
imply, as the Patripassians in the ancient Church assumed, and as
some writers in modern times assume, that the divine nature itself
suffered. This idea is repudiated alike by the Latin, Lutheran,
and Reformed churches. In the " Second Helvetic Confession"^
it is said, " Minime docemus naturam in Christo divinam passam
esse." The "Form of Concord "^ teaches the same thing, quoting
Luther, who says that our Saviour to suffer must become man,
" non enim in sua natura Deus mori potest. Postquam autem
Deus et homo unitus est in -una persona, recte et vere dicitur:
Deus mortuus est, quando videlicet ille homo moritur, qui cum Deo
unum quiddam, sen una persona est." This is precisely what the
Apostle, in Hebrews ii. 14, teaches, when he says that He who
was the Son of God, who made heaven and earth, who upholds all
things by the word of his mouth, and who is immutable and eter-
nal, assumed our nature (flesh and blood) in order that He might
die, and by death destroy him who had the power of death, that is,
the devil. Christ is but one person, with two distinct natures, and
therefore whatever can be predicated of either nature may be
predicated of the person. An indignity offered to a man's body is
offered to himself. If this principle be not correct there was no
greater crime in the crucifixion of Christ than in unjustly inflicting
death on an ordinary man. The principle in question, however, is
clearly recognized in Scripture, and therefore the sacred writers do
not hesitate to say that God purchased the Church with his blood ;
and that the Lord of glory was crucified. Hence such expressions
as Dei morSy Dei sanguis^ Dei passio have the sanction of Scrip-
tural as well of Church usage. It follows from this that the satis-
faction of Christ has all the value which belongs to the obedience
and sufferings of the eternal Son of God, and his righteousness, as
well active as passive, is infinitely meritorious. This is what the
Apostle clearly teaches in Hebrews ix. 13, 14 : " For if the blood
of bulls and of goats .... sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh ;
1 XI.; Niemeyer, p. 485. 2 yiii. 4-1; Hase, p. 772.
484 PART III. Ch. VIL — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through (or with)
an eternal Spii'it oiFered himself without spot to God, purge your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God ? " The supe-
rior efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ is thus referred to the in-
finitely superior dignity of his person.
It follows from the perfection of Christ's satisfaction that it
supersedes and renders impossible all other satisfactions for sin.
The sufferings which justified believers are called upon to endure
are not punishments, because not designed for the satisfaction of
justice. They are chastisements intended for the benefit of the
suff'erer, the edification of the Church, and the glory of God. In
this view all Protestant churches concur.
Romish Doctrine of Satisfaction.
Romanists, while on the one hand they exalt to the utmost the
intrinsic value of Christ's satisfaction, yet on the other hand they
restrict its application. At one time, it was the prevalent doctrine
in the Latin Church that the work of Christ availed only for the
pardon of sins committed before baptism. With regard to post-
baptismal sins, it was held either that they were unpardonable, or
that atonement must be made for them by the sinner himself. This
idea that the satisfaction of Christ avails only to the forgiveness of
sins committed before conversion has been adopted by many
RationaHsts, as for example by Bretschneider.^ He says, " Fiir
spatere Siinden der Christen gilt das Opfer Christi nicht, sondern
es gelit dem Siinder nur einmal, bei der Taufe, zu Gute." " The
sacrifice of Christ does not avail for the later sins of the Christian.
It benefits the sinner only once, at his baptism." ^ What is more
remarkable, Dr. Emmons, Puritan though he was, has very much
the same idea. The only benefit we receive from Christ, he says,
is the formveness of sins. This is granted when we believe. After
that, we ai'e rewarded or punished, not only according to but on
account of our works.^ The doctrine that post-baptismal sins are
unpardonable, having been rejected as heretical, the Romish theo-
logians adopted the theory that the satisfaction of Christ availed
only to the remission of the penalty of eternal death ; leaving the
sinner bound to suffer the temporal punishment due to his trans-
gressions or to make satisfaction for them.
The Romish doctrine of satisfactions arose out of a perversion of
1 Dogmntik, part ii. ch. vi. 2, §§ 154-158, 3d edit. vol. 11. pp. 280-310.
2 Syslematische Entimckeliing, § 107, 4th edit. p. 624.
8 Works of Nathaniel Emmons, D. D., edited by Jacob Ide, D. D. Boston, 1842, vol. v.
Sermons 46, 47.
§3.] REMONSTRANT DOCTRINE. 485
the penances imposed in the early ages upon the lapsed. Those
penances were satisfactions rendered to the Church ; that is, they
were intended to satisfy the Chui'ch of tlie sincerity of the offend-
er's repentance. When they came to be regarded as satisfactions
rendered to the justice of God, the theologians were obliged to
adopt a theory to reconcile the Church practice with the doctrine
of the infinitely meritorious satisfaction of Christ. That theory
was that the satisfaction of Clirist, infinite though it was in merit,
was designed only to secure the remission of everlasting death.
Temporal punishments and the pains of purgatory after death are
still to be endured, at the discretion of the Church, as satisfactions
for sins. This is not the place for the full discussion of this subject.
It is enough to remark, (1.) That if, as the Scriptures teach, every
sin deserves God's wrath and curse, both in this life and in that
which is to come, then it is out of all question for a sinner to make
satisfaction for the least of all his sins. What he offers as the
ground of pardon needs itself to be pardoned. This is so plain that
Romanists have modified their theory so as in fact to destroy it, by
teaching that the satisfiiction rendered by penitents is accepted as
such only for Christ's sake. But if this be so then the satisfaction
of Christ is all-sufficient, and is not confined to removing the pen-
alty of eternal death. (2.) In the Bible, the work of Christ is said
to cleanse from all sin. All other sacrifices and satisfactions are
said to be utterly unavailing, even should a man give the fruit of
his body for the sin of his soul. (3.) Those who believe in Christ
are justified, says the Apostle, from all things. They are not under
condemnation. No one can lay anything to their charge. They
have peace with God. (4.) This doctrine of supplementary satis-
faction is derogatory to Christ and destructive of the peace of the
believer, reducing him to a slavish state, and putting his salvation
in the hands of the priests. (5.) If Christ be our only priest his
work is the only satisfaction for sin. All others are unnecessary,
and every other is impossible.
§ 3. Doctrine of the Scotists and Remonstrants.
While Protestants and the Church generally have held the
doctrine that the satisfaction of Christ, because of the dignity of
his person and the nature and degree of his sufferings was and is
infinitely meritorious, absolutely perfect from its intrinsic worth,
and completely efficacious in its application to all the sins of the
believer, the Scotists in the Middle Ages, and after them Grotius
and the Remonstrants, denied that the work of Christ had inherent
486 PART III. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
value to satisfy divine justice, but said that it was taken as a satis-
faction, acceptatione gratuita. The propositions laid down by
Anselm, in his epoch-making book, " Cur Deus Homo ? " were,
" (1.) Quod necessarium fuit hominem redimi. (2.) Quod non
potuit redimi sine satisfactione. (3.) Quod facienda erat satisfactio
a Deo homine. (4.) Quod convenientior modus fuit hie, scilicet
per passionem Christi." The argument of Anselm is founded on
the assumption that the pardon of sin required an infinite satisfac-
tion, i. e., a satisfaction of infinite merit, which could only be
rendered by a person of infinite dignity. This principle, and all
the propositions founded uj)on it. Duns Scotus contested. He
advanced the opposite princi|)le, namely, " Tantum valet omne
creatum oblatum, pro quanto Deus acceptat." Therefore any man
might have satisfied for his own sins ; or one man for the sins of
all men, had God seen fit so to ordain. " Meritum Christi," he
says, " fuit finitum, quia a principio finito essentialiter dependens.
Non enim Christus quatenus Deus meruit, sed quatenus homo."
This principle became the foundation of the doctrine of the Remon-
strants on the Avork of Christ, and of the work of Grotius, " De
Satisfactione Cliristi." Limborch ^ says, " Satisfactio Clu'isti dici-
tur, qua pro nobis poenas omnes luit peccatis nostris debitas, cas-
que perferendo et exhauriendo divina3 justitiae satisfecit. Verum
ilia sententia nuHum habet in ScriptuKa fundamentum. Mors
Christi vocatur sacrificium pro peccato ; atqui sacrificia non sunt
solutiones debitorum, neque plenariae pro peccatis satisfactiones ;
sed illis peractis conceditur gratuita peccati remissio. In eo errant
quam maxime, quod velint redemtionis pretium per omnia aequiva-
lens esse debere miserias ilii, e qua redemtio fit. Redemtionis pre-
tium enim constitui solet pro libera sestimatione illius qui captivum
detinet, non autem solvi pro captivi merito."^ Curcellaeus, another
distinguished Remonstrant, or Arminian theologian, says the same
thing :^ "Non ergo, ut vulgo putant, satisfecit [Cln-istus] patiendo
omnes poenas, quas peccatis nostris merueramus. Nam primo, istud
ad sacrificii rationem non pertinet Sacrificia enim non sunt
solutiones debitorum Secundo, Christus non est passus
mortem asternam quae erat poena peccato debita, nam paucis tantum
horis in cruce prependit, et tertia die resurrexit ex mortuis. Imo
etiamsi mortem aeternam pertulisset, non videtur satisfitcere j)otuisse
pro omnibus totius mundi peccatis. Haec enim fuisset tantum una
1 Theolof/ia Christiana, iii. xxi. 6; edit. Amsterdam, 1700, p. 255.
2 Ibid. III. xxi. 8; tU supra, p. 256.
8 Opera Theologica, edit. Amsterdam, 1675, p. 300.
§3.] REMONSTRANT DOCTRINE. 487
mors, quae omnibus mortibus, quas singuli pro suis peccatis merue-
rant, non asquivaluisset."
It is obvious that the objections presented in the above extracts
arise from confounding pecuniary with judicial or legal satisfaction.
There is an analogy between them, and, therefore, on the ground
of that analogy it is right to say that Christ assumed and paid our
debts. The analogy consists, first, in the effect produced, namely,
the certain deliverance of those for whom the satisfaction is made ;
secondly, that a real equivalent is paid ; and, thirdly, that in both
cases justice requires that the liberation of the obligee should take
place. But, as we have already seen, the two kinds of satisfaction
differ, first, in that in penal satisfaction the demand is not for
any specific degree or kind of suffering ; secondly, that while the
value of pecuniary satisfaction is independent entirely of the person
by whom the payment is made, in the other case everything de-
pends on the dignity of him by whom the satisfaction is rendered ;
and, thirdly, that the benefits of a penal satisfaction are conferred
according to the terms or conditions of the covenant in pursuance
of which it is offered and accepted.
The principle that a thing avails for whatever God chooses to
take it, which is the fnindation of the doctrine that Christ's work
was not a satisfaction in virtue of its intrinsic worth but only by
the gracious acceptance of God, cannot be true. For, —
1. It amounts to saying that there is no truth in anything. God
may (if such language may be pardoned) take anything for any-
thing; a whole for a part, or a part for the whole; truth for error, or
error for truth ; right for wrong, or wrong for right ; the blood of a
goat for the blood of the Eternal Son of God. This is impossible.
The nature of God is immutable, — immutable reason, truth, and
goodness ; and his nature determines his will and his judgments.
Therefore it is impossible that He should take that to be satisfac-
tion which is not really such.
2. The principle in question involves the denial of the necessity
of the work of Christ. It is inconceivable that God should send
his only begotten Son into the world to suffer and die if the same
end could have been accomplished in any other way. If every
man could atone for his own sins, or one man for the sins of the
whole world, then Christ is dead in vain.
3. If this doctrine be true then it is not true that it is impossible
that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. If
every creatum ohlatum tantum valet, pro quanto Deus acceptat,
488 PART III. Cii. VII.— SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
then why might not the Okl Testament sacrifices have sufficed to
take away sin ? What rendered them inefficacious was their own
inlierent worthlessness. And what renders the satisfaction of
Christ effectual is its own inherent value.
4. The Scriptures teach the necessity of the death of Christ, not
only by implication, but also by direct assertion. In Galatians ii.
21, the Apostle says, " If righteousness come by the law, then Christ
is dead in vain." This means that if the righteousness necessary
for the salvation of men could have been secured in any other way
the whole work of Christ is a matter of supererogation, an unneces-
sary expenditure of what was beyond all price. Still more expHcit
is his language in Galatians iii. 21 : " If there had been a law given
which could have given life, verily rigliteousness should liave been
by the law." It is here asserted that if any other method could
have availed to save sinners it would have been adopted. Our
Lord, in Luke xxlv. 26, asks, " Ought not Christ to have suffi^red
these things ? " There was an obligation, or necessity, which
demanded his sufferings if the salvation of sinners was to be accom-
plished. The Apostle again, in Hebrews ii. 10, says, " It became
him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bring-
ing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation
perfect through suffierings." There was a necessity for the suffer-
ings of Christ, and that necessity was not merely governmental,
nor for the accumulating moral power over the sinner's heart, but
it arose out of the nature of God. It became Him. It was con-
sonant with his perfections and character, which is the highest
conceivable kind of necessity.
5. What the Scriptures teach of the justice of God leads to the
same conclusion. Justice is a form of moral excellence. It belongs
to the nature of God. It demands the punishment of sin. If sin
be pardoned it can be pardoned in consistency with the divine
justice only on the ground of a forensic penal satisfaction. There-
fore the Apostle says (Romans iii. 25), that God sent forth Christ
as a propitiation through faith in his blood, in order that God might
be just in justifying the ungodly.
6. The Scriptures, in representing the gift of Christ as the high-
est conceivable exhibition of the divine love, do thereby teach,
first, that the end to be accompHshed was worthy of the sacrifice ;
and, secondly, that the sacrifice was necessary to the attainment
of the end. If the end could have been otherwise attained there
would have been no exhibition of love in the gift of Christ for its
accomplishment.
§ 4.] SATISFACTION RENDERED TO JUSTICE. 489
7. All that the Bible teaches of the truth of God ; of the immu-
tability of the law; of the necessity of faith ; of the uselessness and
wotthlessness of all other sacrifices for sin ; and of the impossibility
of salvation except through the work of the incarnate Son of God,
precludes the idea that his satisfaction was not necessary to our
salvation, or tliat any other means could have accomplished the
object. And if thus absolutely necessary, it must be that nothing
else has worth enough to satisfy the demands of God's law. It is
the language and spirit of the whole Bible, and of every believing
heart in relation to Christ that his " blood alone has power suffi-
cient to atone."
§ 4. Satisfaction rendered to Justice.
The second point involved in the Scriptural doctrine concerning
the satisfaction of Christ is, that it was a satisfaction to the justice
of God. This is asserted in all the Confessions above cited. And
by justice is not meant simply general rectitude or Tightness of
character and action ; nor simply rectoral justice, which consists in
a due regard to the rights and interests of subjects in relation to
rulers ; much less does it mean commutative justice or honesty.
It is admitted that the Hebrew word P'^^Vj the Greek StKatos, the
Latin /ms^ms, the English just or righteous, and their cognates, are
used in all these senses both in Scripture and in ordinary life. But
they are also used to express the idea of distributive or retributive
justice ; that form of moral excellence which demands the righteous
distribution of rewards and punishments which renders it certain,
under the government of God, that obedience will be rewarded and
sin punished. This is also properly called, especially in its relation
to sin, vindicatory justice, because it vindicates and maintains the
right. Vindicatory and vindictive, in the ordinary sense of this
latter term, are not synonymous. It is a common mistake or mis-
representation to confound these two words, and to represent those
who ascribe to God the attribute of vindicatory justice as regarding
Him as a vindictive being, thirsting for revenge. There is as much
difference between the words and the ideas they express as there
is between a righteous judge and a malicious murderer. The
question then is. Does the attribute of vindicatory justice belong
to God ? Does his infinite moral excellence require that sin
should be punished on account of its own inherent demerit, irre-
spective of the good effects which may flow from such punishment?
Or is justice what Leibnitz defines it to be, " Benevolence guided
by wisdom." It is admitted that the work of Christ was in some
490 PART III. Ch. VII. -satisfaction OF CHRIST.
sense a satisfaction ; that it satisfied in some way the exigencies
of the case, or the conditions necessary to the salvation of man. It
is further, at least generally, admitted that it was in some sense a
satisfaction of justice. This being the case, everything depends
on what is meant by justice. If justice is " benevolence guided
by wisdom," or a benevolent disposition on the part of a ruler to
sustain his authority as a means of promoting the happiness of his
kingdom, then the work of Christ is one thing. It may be simply
a means of reformation, or of moral impression. But if justice is
that perfection of the divine nature which renders it necessary that
the righteous be rewarded and the wicked punished, then the work
of Christ must be a satisfaction of justice in that sense of the term.
The question, therefore, concerning "the nature of the atonement"
depends on the question whether there is in God such an attribute
as distributive or vindicatory justice. This question has already
been discussed when treating of the attributes of God. All that is
necessary here is a brief recapitulation of the arguments there
presented, —
1. We ascribe intelligence, knowledge, power, holiness, goodness,
and truth to God, (a.) Because these are perfections which belong
to our own nature, and must of necessity belong to Him in whose
image we were created. (5.) Because these attributes are all man-
ifested in his works, (c.) Because they are all revealed in his
Word. On the same grounds we ascribe to God justice ; that is,
the moral excellence which determines Him to punish sin and
reward righteousness. The argument in this case is not only of
the same kind, but of the same cogency. We are just as conscious
of a sense of justice as we are of intelligence or of power. This con-
sciousness belongs to man as man, to all men in all ages and under
all circumstances. It must, therefore, belong to the original con-
stitution of their nature. Consequently it is as certain that God is
just, in the ordinary sense of that word, as that He is intelligent
or holy.
2. The Spirit of God in convincing a man of sin convinces him
of guilt as well as of pollution. That is. He convinces him of his
desert of punishment. But a sense of a desert of punishment is a
conviction that we ought to be punished ; and this is of necessity
attended with the persuasion that, under the righteous government
of God, the punishment of sin is inevitable and necessary. They
who sin, the Apostle says, know the righteous judgment of God,
that they are worthy of death.
3. The justice of God is revealed in his works, (a.) In the eon-
S4.] SATISFACTION RENDERED TO JUSTICE. 491
stitution of our nature. The connection between sin and misery is
so intimate that many have gone to the extreme of teaching that
there is no other punishment of sin but its natural effects. This is
contrary to fact as well as to Scripture. Nevertheless it is true
that to be " carnally minded is death," that is, damnation. There
is no help for it. It is vain to say that God will not punish sin
when He has made sin and its punishment inseparable. The
absence of light is darkness ; the absence of life is deatii ; (5.) It
is, however, not only in the constitution of our nature, but also in
all his works of providence, that God has revealed his purpose to
punish sin. The deluge; the destruction of the cities of the plain;
the overthrow of Jerusalem and the dispersion and long-continued
degradation of the Jewish people; the ruins of Nineveh, of Baby-
lon, of Tyre and Sidon, and of Egypt ; and the present condition of
many of the nations of the earth, as well as the general administra-
tion of the divine government, are proof enough that God is an
avenger, that He will in no wise spare the guilty.
4. The Scriptures so constantly and so variously teach that God
is just, that it is impossible to present adequately their testimony
on the subject, (a.) Wo have the direct assertions of Scripture.
Almost the first words which God spoke to Adam were, " In the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The ano-els
who sinned are reserved in chains unto the judgment of the great
day. Death is declared to be the wages, i. e., the proper recom-
pense of sin, which justice demands that it should receive. God is
declared to be a consuming fire. Men can no more secure them-
selves from the punishment of their sins, by their own devices, than
they can save themselves from a raging conflagration by a coverino*
of chaff; The penalty of the law is as much a revelation of the
nature of God as its precept is. As He caimot, consistently with
his perfections, exonerate men from the obligation of obedience,
so He cannot allow them to sin with impunity. It is, therefore,
declared that He will reward every man according to his works.
(5.) All the divinely ordained institutions of religion, whether
Patriarchal, Mosaic, or Christian, were founded on the assumption
of the justice of God, and were designed to impress that great truth
on the minds of men. They take for granted that men are sinners;
and that, being sinners, they need expiation for their guilt as well
as moral purification, in order to salvation. Sacrifices, therefore,
were instituted from the beginning to teach the necessity of expia-
tion and to serve as prophetic types of the only effectual expiation
which, in the fulness of time, was to be offered for the sins of men.
492 PART III. Ch. VII. — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
Witliout the shedding of blood (i. e., without vicarious punishment)
there is no remission. This is recorded, not merely as a fact under
the Mosaic dispensation, but as embodying a principle valid under
all dispensations. It is not, therefore, this or that declaration of
Scripture, or this or that institution which must be explained away
if the justice of God be denied, but the whole form and structure
of the relicrion of the Bible. That religion as the relimon for sin-
ners rests on the assumption of the necessity of expiation. This is
its corner-stone, and tlie whole fabric falls into ruin if that stone be
removed. That God cannot pardon sin without a satisfaction to
justice, and that He cannot have fellowship with the unholy, are
the two great truths which are revealed in the constitution of our
nature as well as in the Scriptures, and Avhich are recognized in all
forms of religion, human or divine. It is because the demands of
justice are met by the work of Christ, that his gospel is the power
of God unto salvation, and that it is so unspeakably precious to
those whom the Spirit of God has convinced of sin. (c.) We
accordingly find that the plan of salvation as unfolded in the New
Testament is founded on the assumption that God is just. The
argument of the sacred writers is this : The wrath of God is
revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. That
is, God is determined to punish sin. All men, whether Gentiles or
Jews, are sinners. Therefore the whole world is guilty before
God. Hence no man can be justified by works. It is a contradic-
tion to say that those who are under condemnation for their char-
acter and conduct can be justified on the ground of anything they
are or can do. There is no force in this argument unless there is a
necessity for the punishment of sin. Human sovereigns pardon
criminals; earthly parents forgive their children. If the penalty
of the law could be as easily remitted in the divine government
then it would not follow from the fact that all men are sinners that
they cannot be forgiven on the ground of their repentance and
reformation. The Scriptures, however, assume that if a man sins
he must die. On this assumption all their representations and
arguments are founded. Hence the plan of salvation which the
Bible reveals supposes tiiat the justice of God which renders the
punishment of sin necessary has been satisfied. Men can be par-
doned and restored to the favour of God, because Clirist was set
forth as an expiation for their sins, through faith in his blood;
because He was made a curse for us ; because He died, the just for
the unjust ; because He bore our sins in his own body on the tree ;
and because the penalty due to us was laid on Him. It is clear,
§ 5.] SATISFACTION RENDERED TO THE DIVINE LAW. 493
therefore, that tlie Scriptures recognize the truth that God is just,
in the sense that He is determined by his moral excellence to
punish all sin, and therefore that the satisfaction of Christ which
secures the pardon of sinners is rendered to the justice of God. Its
primary and principal design is neither to make a moral impression
upon the offenders themselves, nor to operate didactically on other
intelHgent creatures, but to satisfy the demands of justice ; so that
God can be just in justifying the ungodly.
§ 5. The Work of Christ Satisfies the Demands of the Law.
A third point involved in tlie Church doctrine on the work of
Christ, is that it is a satisfaction to the divine law. This indeed
may seem to be included under the foregoing head. If a satisfac-
tion to justice, it must be a satisfaction to law. But in the ordi-
nary use of the terms, the word law is more comprehensive than
justice. To satisfy justice is to satisfy the demand which justice
makes for the punishment of sin. But the law demands far more
than the punishment of sin, and therefore satisfaction to the law
includes more than the satisfaction of vindicatory justice. In its
relation to the law of God the Scriptural doctrine concerning the
work of Christ includes the following points : —
1. The law of God is immutable. It can neither be abroo;ated
nor dispensed with. This is true both as respects its precepts and
penalty. Such is the nature of God as holy, that He cannot cease
to require his rational creatures to be holy. It can never cease to
be obligatory on them to love and obey God. And such is the
nature of God as just, that He cannot cease to condemn sin, and
therefore all those who are guilty of sin.
2. Our relation to the law is two-fold, federal and moral. It is
of the nature of a covenant prescribing the conditions of life. It
says, " Ye shall keep my statutes and my judgments ; which if a
man do, he shall live in them." And, " Cursed is every one that
continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the
law to do them."
3. From this federal relation to the law we are, under the gos-
pel, delivered. We are no longer bound to be free from all sin,
and to render perfect obedience to the law, as the condition of sal-
vation. If this were not the case, no flesh living could be saved.
We are not under law but under grace.
4. This deliverance from the law is not effected by its abroga-
tion, or by lowering its demands, but by the work of Christ. He
was made under the law that He might redeem those who were
under the law.
494 PART III. Ch. Vll. — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
5. The work of Christ was therefore of the nature of a satisfac-
tion to the demands of the law. By his obedience and sufferings,
by his whole righteousness, active and passive, He, as our repre-
sentative and substitute, did and endured all that the law demands.
6. Those, who by faith receive this righteousness, and trust upon
it for justification, are saved ; and receive the renewing of their
Avhole nature into the imaw of God. Those who refuse to submit
to this righteousness of God, and go about to establish their own
righteousness, are left under the demands of the law ; they are re-
quired to be free from all sin, or having sinned, to bear the penalty.
Proof of the Immutability/ of the Law.
The principles above stated are not arbitrarily assumed ; they
are not deductions from any a priori maxims or axioms ; they are
not the constituent elements of a humanly constructed theory ;
they are not even the mere obiter dicta of inspired men ; they are
the principles wliich the sacred writers not only announce as true,
but on which they argue, and which they employ in the construc-
tion of that system of doctrine which they present as the object of
faith and ground of hope to fallen men. The only legitimate way
therefore of combating these principles, is to prove, not that they
fail to satisfy the reason, the feelings, or the imagination, or that
they are incumbered with this or that difficulty ; but that they are
not Scriptural. If the sacred writers do announce and embrace
them, then they are true, or we have no solid ground on which
to rest our hopes for eternity.
The Scriptural character of these principles being the only ques-
tion of real importance, appeal must be made at once to the Word
of God. Throughout the Scriptures, the immutability of the di-
vine law ; the necessity of its demands being satisfied ; the impos-
sibility of sinners making that satisfaction for themselves ; the possi-
bility of its being rendered by substitution ; and that a wonderfully
constituted person, could and would, and in fact has, accomplished
this work in our behalf, are the great constituent principles of the
religion of the Bible. As the revelation contained in the Scrip-
tures has been made in a progressive form, we find all these prin-
ci))les culminating in their full development in the later writings
of the New Testament. In St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, for
example, the following positions are assumed and established:
(1.) The law must be fulfilled. (2.) It demands jierfect obedi-
ence ; and, in case of transgression, the penalty of death. (3.) No
fallen man can fulfil those conditions, or satisfy the demands of the
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 495
law. (4.) Christ, the Eternal Son of God, clothed in our nature,
has made this satisfaction to law for us. (5.) We are thus freed
from the law. We are not under law, but under grace. (6.) All
that is now required of us is faith in Christ. To those who are in
Him there is no condemnation. (7.) By his obedience we are
constituted righteous, and, being thus reconciled to God, we be-
come partakers of the holy and immortal life of Christ, and are
delivered not only from the penalty, but from the power of sin,
and made the sons and heirs of God. (8.) The great condemning
sin of men under the gospel, is rejecting the righteousness and Sj)irit
of Christ, and insisting either tiiat they need no Saviour, or that
they can in some way save themselves ; that they can satisfy all
God's just demands, and deliver themselves from the power of sin.
If the foregoing principles are eliminated from the Pauline epistles,
their whole life and power are gone. And Paul assures us that he
received his doctrines, not from men, but by the revelation of Jesus
Clirist. It is against this rock, — the substitution of Christ in the
place of sinners ; his making a full satisfaction to the justice and
law of God, thus working out for us a perfect righteousness, by
which we may be justified, — that the assaults of philosopliy, falsely
so called, and of heresy in all its forms have been directed from the
beginning. This it is that the Gnostics and New Platonists in
the first centuries; tlie Scotists and Franciscans during the Middle
Ages ; the Socinians and Remonstrants at, and after the Reforma-
tion ; and Rationalists and the speculative pliilosophy of our own
age, have striven to overthrow. But it remains, what it ever has
been, the foundation of the faith, hope, and life of the Church.
§ 6. Proof of the Doctrine.
The Scriptural evidence in support of this great doctrine, as far
as it can well be presented within reasonable limits, has already, in
great measure, been exhibited, in the statement and vindication of
the several elements which it includes.
It has been shown, (1.) That the work of Christ for our salva-
tion, was a real satisfaction of infinite inherent dignity and worth.
(2.) That it was a satisfaction not to commutative justice (as
paying a sum of money would be), nor to the rectoral justice or
benevolence of God, but to his distributive and vindicatory justice
which renders necessary the punishment of sin ; and (3.) That it
was a satisfaction to the law of God, meeting its demands of a per-
fect righteousness for the justification of sinners. If these points
be admitted, the Churclt doctrine concerning the satisfaction, or
496 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
atonement of Christ, is admitted in all that is essential to its intee-
rity. It remains, therefore, only to refer to certain classes of pas-
sages and modes of representation pervading the Scriptures, which
assume or assert the truth of all the principles above stated.
Christ saves us as our Priest.
Christ is said to save men as a priest. It is not by the mere ex-
ercise of power, nor by instruction and mental illumination ; nor by
any objective, persuasive, moral influence ; nor by any subjective
operation, whether natural or supernatural, whether intelligible or
mystical, but by acting for them the part of a representative, sub-
stitute, propitiator, and intercessor. It was in the Old Testament
foretold that the Messiah was to be both priest and king ; that he
was to be a priest after the order of Melchisedec. In the New
Testament, and especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is
devoted almost exclusively to the exhibition of the priestly char-
acter and work of Christ, it is taught, —
1. That a priest is a substitute or representative, appointed to
do for sinners what they could not do for themselves. Their guilt
and pollution forbid their access to God. Some one, therefore,
must be authorized to appear before God in their behalf, and effect
a reconciliation of God to sinners.
2. That this reconciliation can only be effected by means of an
expiation for sin. The guilt of sin can be removed in no other
way. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. A
priest, therefore, is one appointed for men (^'. e., to act in their be-
half), to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin.
3. That this expiation was effected by the substitution of a vic-
tim in the place of the sinner, to die in his stead, i. e., in Scriptural
language, "to bear his sins." " Guilt," says Ebrard, in a passage
already quoted, " can be removed only by being actually punished,
i. e., expiated. Either the sinner himself must bear the pianish-
ment, or a substitute must be found, which can assume the guilt,
bear the penalty, and give the freedom from guilt or righteousness
thus secured, to the offender." ^ This he gives as the fundamental
idea of the epistle to the Hebrews.
4. Such being the nature of the priesthood and the way in which
a priest saves those for whom he acts, the Apostle shows, first, with
regard to the priests under the old economy, that such was the
method, ordained by God, by which the remission of ceremonial
sins and restoration to the j)rivileges of the theocracy, were to be
1 Dogmalik, ii., iii. 1, § 401. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ii. p. 159.
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 497
secured ; and secondly, that the victims then offered, having no
inherent dignity or wortli, could not take away sin ; they could not
purge the conscience from the sense of guilt, or bring to the end
contemplated (TeAeitGo-at) those for whom they were oifered, and
hence had to be continually repeated. In Hebrews ix. 9, it is said
owpd. T€ Ktti OvaMi .... jxrj Swa/xcrai Kara cweiSr^crtv TcA-eiwcrai rov Xa-
Tpcvovra, i, e., says Robinson, " which could never make full expi.i-
tion for the bringer, so as to satisfy his conscience."
5. The Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices were, therefore, tempo-
rary, being the mere types and shadows of the true priest and the
real sacrifice, promised fi'om the beginning.
6. Christ, the Eternal Son of God, assumed our nature in order
that He mighty be a merciful and faithful high priest, to make
reconciliation for the sins of the people. That is, to make expia-
tion for sin. The word used is iXao-Ko/^at, propitium reddere ; which
in the Sej)tuagint, is the substitute for "i^ps (to cover guilty, to hide
sin from the sight of God. In the New Testament, as in the Septu-
agint, IXda-KOfxaL is the special term for sacerdotal expiation, and is
not to be confounded with aTroKaTaAAarrco-^ai, to reconcile. The
latter is the efi:ect of the former ; reconciliation is secured by ex-
piation.
7. Christ is proved, especially in Hebrews v., to be a real priest ;
first, because He has all the qualifications for the office. He was a
man, was a substitute, had a sacrifice, and was able to sympathize
with his people ; secondly, because He was called of God to the
priesthood, as was Aaron ; thirdly, because He actually discharged
all the functions of the office.
8. The sacrifice which this great high priest offered in our be-
half, was not the blood of irrational animals, but his own most
precious blood.
9. This one sacrifice has perfected forever (rcreAeituKe!', made a
perfect expiation for) them that are sanctified. (Hebrews x. 14.)
10. This sacrifice has superseded all others. No other is needed;
and no other is possible.
11. Those who reject this method of salvation certainly perish.
To them there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. (Hebrews x.
26.)
It can hardly be questioned that this is a correct, although feeble
statement of the leading ideas of the Epistle to the Hebrews. With
this agree all other representations of the Scriptures both in the Old
Testament and in the New, and therefore if we adhere to the doc-
trine of the Bible we mvist believe that Christ saves us, not by
498 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
power, or by moral influence, but as a priest, by offering Himself as
an expiatory sacrifice for our sins. To deny this ; to explain away
these express teachings of the Scriptures, as mere accommodations
to the modes of thought prevalent in the age of the Apostles; or
to substitute modern ideas "of the nature of sacrifices, for those of
the Bible and of the whole ancient world ; or to attempt to get at
the philosophical truth inclosed in these Scriptural forms, while we
reject the forms themselves, are only different ways of substituting
our thoughts for God's thoughts, our way of salvation for God's
way. If the owdinary authoritative rules of interpretation are to be
adhered to, it cannot be denied that the Scriptures teach that Christ
saves us as a priest by making a full expiation for our sins, bearing
the penalty of them in his own person in our behalf.
Christ saves us as a Sacrifice.
Intimately connected with the argument from the priestly office
of Christ, and inseparable from it, is that which is derived from
those numerous passages in which He is set forth as a sacrifice for
sin. Much as the nature of the Old Testament sacrifices has of
late years been discussed, and numerous as are the theories which
have been advanced upon this subject, there are some points with
regard to which all who profess faith in the Scriptures, are agreed.
In the first place, it is agreed that Christ was in some sense a sac-
rifice for the sins of men ; secondly, that the sense in which He
was a sacrifice is the same as that in which the sin offerings of the
Old Testament were sacrifices; and, thirdly, that the true Scriptural
idea of sacrifices for sin is a historical question and not a matter of
speculation. According to Miciiaelis, they were mere fines ;i ac-
cording to Sykes, federal rites ; according to others, expressions
of gratitude, offerings to God in acknowledgment of his goodness ;
according to others, they were symbolical of the surrender and de-
votion of the life of the offerer to God ; ^ according to others, they
were confessions of sin and symbolical exhibitions of penitence ; and
according to others, their whole design and effect was in some way
to j)roduce a salutary moral impression.^ It is admitted that the
1 This also is the doctrine of Hofinann in his Schriftbtioeis. It is one of the principal
objects of Delitzsch in his Commenlary on the Epistle to the Hebrews and in the long Ex-
cursus attached to that admirable work, to contest the doctrine of Hofmann on the nature of
the work of Christ.
■■i Tliis is the theory advocated by Dr. Bahr, in his SymhoUk.
8 Keil, in his Biblische Archaolocjle, and many others, give substantially this moral view.
According to Keil, sacritices were designed to teach the translation of the sinner from a state
of alienation from God to a state of grace. Dr. Young, in his Liyhl and Life of Men, repre-
sents them as Bahr does, as indicating the surrender of the soul to God, and as intended to
§ 6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 499
offerings of the old economy were of different kinds, not only as
bloody and unbloody, but that among those which involved the
shedding of blood some were designed for one purpose and some
for another. The whole question relates to the sin offerings prop-
erly so called, of which the sacrifices on the great day of atonement
were the special illustrative examples. The common doctrine as
to these sin offerings is, (1.) That the design of such offerings was
to propitiate God ; to satisfy his justice, and to render it consistent
and proper that the offence for which they were offered should
be forgiven ; (2.) That this propitiation of God was secured
by the expiation of guilt ; by such an offering as covered sin, so
that it did not appear before Him as demanding punishment ;
(3.) That this expiation was effected by vicarious punishment ;
the victim being substituted for the offender, bearing his guilt, and
suffering the penalty which he had incuri-ed ; (4.) That the
effect of such sin offerings was the pardon of the offender, and his
restoration to favour and to the enjoyment of the privileges which
he had forfeited. If this be the true Scriptural idea of a sacrifice
for sin, then do the Scriptures in declaring that Christ was a
sacrifice, intend to teach that He was the substitute for sinners ;
that He bore their guilt and suffered the penalty of the law in their
stead ; and thereby reconciled them unto God ; i. e., rendered it
consistent with his perfections that they should be pardoned and
restored to tlie divine fellowship and favour.
Proof of the Common Doctrine concerning Sacrifices for Sin.
That tliis is the true doctrine concerning sacrifices for sin may
be argued, —
1. From the general sentiment of the ancient world. These
offerings arose from a sense of guilt and apprehension of tlie wrath
of God. Under the pressure of the sense of sin, and when the dis-
pleasure of God was experienced or apprehended, men everywliere
I'esorted to every means in their power to make expiation for their
offences, and to propitiate the favour of God. Of these means the
most natural, as it appears from its being universally adopted, was
the offering of propitiatory sacrifices. The more numerous and costly
these offerings the greater ho])e was cherished of their efficacy.
Men did not spare even the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their
give a divine sanction to the use of animal food. Notwithstandinfj the=e conflicting speca-
lati'ins of individual writers, it remains true that the great body of Biljlical scholars of all
ages and of all classes regard the sin offerings of the Old Testament as real piacular sacri-
fices. This is done by the highest class of the modern German theologians, who for them-
selves reject the Churcli doctrine of the atonement.
500 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
souls. It was not that the Deity, to be propitiated, needed these
oblations, or could Himself enjoj them ; but it was that justice
demanded satisfaction, and the hope was entertained that the death
of the victims mio;ht be taken in lieu of that of the offender. Even
those who repudiate the doctrine of expiation as belonging to the
relio;ion of the Bible, admit that it was the doctrine of the ancient
world. But if it was tiie doctrine of the ancient world, two things
naturally follow ; first, that it has a foundation in the nature of man,
and in the intuitive knowledge of the relation which he as a sin-
ner bears to God ; and, secondly, that when we find exactly the
same rites and ceremonies, the same forms of expression and the
same significant actions in the Scriptures, they cannot fairly be
imderstood in a sense diametrically opposite to that in which all the
rest of the world understood them.
2. The second argument is that it is beyond doubt that the
Hebrews, to whom the Mosaic institutions were given, undei'stood
their sacrifices for sin to be expiatory offerings and not mere forms
of worship or expressions of their devotion of themselves to God ;
or as simply didactic, designed to make a moral impression on the
offender and on the spectators. They were explained as expiations,
in which the victim bore the guilt of the sinner, and died in his
stead and for his deliverance. That such was the doctrine of the
Hebrews is jn-oved by such authors as Outram, in his work " De
Sacrificiis ; " by Schoettgen, " Horse Hebrsege et Talmudicae ; "
Eisenmenger, " Endecktes Judenthum," and other writers on the
subject. Outram quotes from the Jewish authorities forms of con-
fession connected with the imposition of hands on the victim. One
is to the following effect : ^ "I beseech thee, O Lord, I have
sinned, I have done perversely, I have rebelled, I have done (spe-
cifying the offence) ; but now I repent, and let this victim be my
expiation." The design of the imposition of hands was to signify,
say these authorities, the removal of sin from the offender to the
animal.^
3. It is no less certain that the whole Christian world has ever
regarded the sacrifices for sin to be expiatory, designed to teach
the necessity of expiation and to foreshadow the method by which
it was to be accomplished. Such, as has been shown, is the faith of
the Latin, of the Lutheran, and of the Reformed churches, all
the great historical bodies which make up the sum of professing
1 " Obsecro Domine, peccavi, rebellis fui, perverse egi, hoc et illud feci, nunc autein me
peccasse poenitet; haec sit itaque expiatio mea." De Sacrificiis, i. xxii. 9, edit. London
1677, p. 273.
2 Lib. I. XV. 8, p. 166 ff.
§ 6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 501
Christians. That this world-wide beUef in the necessity of expia-
tion even among the heathen ; this uniform conviction of the
Hebrews that the sacrifices, whicli they wei'e commanded to offer
for sin, were expiatory ; this concurrent judgment of the Christian
Churcli in all ages and places are, after all, mere error and delu-
sion ; that such is not the teaching either of the natural conscience,
or of the Hebrew Scriptures, or of Christ and his Apostles, is abso-
lutely incredible. The attempt to overthrow a conviction thus
general and permanent, is chimerical.
4. But these arguments from general conviction and assent,
although perfectly valid in such cases as the present, are not those
on which the faith of Christians rests. They find the doctrine of
expiatory sacrifices clearly taught in Scripture ; they see that the
sin offerings under the Old Testament were expiations.
The Old Testament Sacrifices Expiatory.
This is plain from the clear meaning of the language used in ref-
erence to them. They are called sin offerings ; trespass offerings, i. e.,
offerings made by siimers on account of sin. They are said to bear
the sins of the offender ; to make expiation for sin, i. e., to cover it
from the sight of God's justice ; they are declared to be intended to
secure forgiveness, not through repentance or reformation, — these
are presupposed before the offering is brought, — but by shedding
of blood, by giving soul for soul, life for life. The reason assigned in
Leviticus xvii. 11, why blood should not be used for food, was. that
it was set apart to make expiation for sin. The Hebrew is "HQsb
:i5''nt27D5"b">, which the Septuagint renders eftXao-Kco-^ai vrepl twv {j/vx<^v
ii/AWf ; and the Vulgate, " Ut super altare in eo expietis pro animabus
vestris." The elder Michaelis expresses clearly the meaning of the
passage and the design of the prohibition, when he says (On Leviti-
cus xvii. 10), " Ne sanguis res sanctissima, ad expiationem immun-
dorum a Deo ordinata, communi usu profanaretur." The last clause
of the verse, which in our version is rendered, " For it is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul," is more literally and cor-
rectly i-endered, " For blood by (its) soul or life makes atonement ; "
or, as Bahr and Fairbairn translate it, " The blood atones through
the soul." The latter writer con-ectly remarks,^ " This is the only
sense of the passage that can be grammatically justified ; for the
preposition 3 after the verb to atone ("id::) invariably denotes that by
which the atonement is made ; while as invariably the person or ob-
ject for which is denoted by b or b37." — Aben Ezra, quoted by
1 Typology, edit. Philadelphia, 1857, vol. ii. p. 288, note.
502 PART m. Ch. Vn. - SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
Biihr, had briefly indicated tlie right interpretation. " Sanguis
anirna, quae sibi inest, expiat." It seems impossible that this and
similar express declarations of the Old Testament, that sacrifices for
sins were expiations, can be reconciled with the modern speculation
that they were symbolical expressions of devotion to God, or means
of effecting a i-eformation of the offender, who because of that ref-
ormation was restored to God's favour.
The argument, therefore, is that the Scriptures expressly declare
that these sacrifices were made for the expiation of sin. This idea
is expressed by the word 153, to cover, to hide from view, to blot
out, to expiate. Hence the substantive -153 means that which
delivers from punishment or evil. It is the common word for an
atonement, but it also is used for a ransom, because it is rendered
to secure deliverance. Thus the half shekel required to be paid by
every male Israelite as a ransom for his soul was called a -15b (in
Greek, Xvrpov, or XvTpa'y. See, Exodus xxx. 12—16 : " When thou
takest the sum of the children of Israel, .... then shall they
give every man a ransom /~1D3) for his soul unto the Lord, ....
half a shekel .... the I'ich shall not give more, and the poor
shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering
to the Lord, to make an atonement ("iSDb, Gr. e^'iAdo-ao-6'at) for
your souls." Here it is impossible to mistake the meaning.
The half shekel was a ransom, something paid to secure deliver-
ance from evil. It was not a symbol of devotion, or an exj)ression
of penitence, but a payment of a stipulated ransom. That the half
shekel bore no proportion to the value of a man's life, or the blood
of a victim to the value of the soul, does not alter the case. The
idea is the same. The truth taught is that satisfaction must be
made if sinners are to be saved. The constantly recurring expres-
sions, "to make atonement for sin ; " " to make atonement on the
horns of the altar ; " " to make atonement for the sins of the people,"
etc., which are correct renderings of the Hebrew phiiises which
mean " to make expiation," as understood from the beginning,
cannot be reconciled with any other theory of sacrifices than that of
vicarious satisfaction. In Numbers xxxv. 31, it is said, " Ye shall
take no satisfaction ("IDS, Xvrpa, pretium), for the life of a murderer,
which is guilty of death ; but he shall be surely put to death ....
the land cannot be cleansed ("i2D^ ; Septuagint, c'i'tA.ao-^'/ytrerai ; Vul-
gate, wee aliter expiari potest) of the blood that is shed therein, but
by the blood of him that shed it." Here again there can be no
mistake. To cover sin, -iS2, is to expiate it by a penal satisfaction ;
that expiation is expressed, as we have seen, by -15*3^ which literally
§ 6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 503
signifies that which covers, and, in such connections, that whicli
covers sin so tliat it no longer demands punishment. When, there-
fore, a sacrifice is said to cover sin it must mean that it expiates it,
hides it from the eyes of justice b}' a satisfaction. A npb is a sat-
isfaction. This satisfaction must be made either by the offender or
by some one in his stead. In the case of murder, if the perpetra-
tor could not be discovered, a victim was to be slain in his stead,
and thus satisfaction was to be made. The law in reference to this
case makes the nature and design of sin offerings perfectly plain.
The elders of the nearest city were commanded to take a heifer
which had not borne the yoke, and wash their hands over it in at-
testati(m of their innocence of the blood of the murdered man ; the
priests being present. The heifer was to be slain, and thus expia-
tion made for the offence. The words are, uin cn^ "1533V
Greek, koI k^iXaaOrjo- erai aurot? to ajjxa ; Latin, " Et auferetur ab eis
reatus sanguinis." The lenioval of guilt by a vicarious death is,
therefore, the Scriptural idea of a sin offering. It would, however,
require a volume to present a tithe of the evidence furnished by
the phraseology of the Old Testament, that the sin offerings were
regarded as expiations for sin; not designed proximately for the
reformation of the offf nder, but to secure the remission of the pen-
alty due to his transgression. The constantly recurring formula is,
Let him offer the sacrifice for "sin, and it sliall be foi'o-iven him."
The ceremonies attending the offering of sacrifices f<M' sin show
that they were understood to be expiatory. (1.) The victims were
selected from the class of clean animals appropriated for the sup-
port of the life of man. They were to be free from all blemish.
This physical perfection was typical of the freedom from all sin of
Him who was to 'be the substitute for sinners. (2.) The offender
was required himself to bring the victim to the altar. The service
involved an acknowledgment on the part of the offerer of his just
exposure to punishment for his sin. (3.) The hands of the offender
were to be laid on the head of the victim, to express the ideas of
substitution and of transfer of guilt. The sin of the offerer was laid
upon the head of the victim. (4.) The blood of the victim, slain
by the priest, was received by him as the minister of God, sprinkled
on the altar, or, on the great day of atonement, carried into the
Most Holy place where the symbol of God's presence was, and
sprinkled on the top of the ark of the covenant ; showing that the
service terminated on God ; that it was designed to apj)ease his
wrath (according to Scriptural phraseology), to satisfy his justice,
and to open the way for the free forgiveness of sin. The significance
504 PART m. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
assigned to these ceremonial acts is that which their nature de-
mands; which the Scriptures themselves assign to them ; and which
they must have either to account for the effects which the sin
offering produced, or to make out the correspondence between the
type and the antitype wliich the New Testament declares was
intended. These symbolical acts admit of no other explanation
without doing violence to the text, and forcing on antiquity the
ideas of modern times, which is to substitute our speculations for
the authoritative teachings of the Scriptures.
The imposition of the hands of the offender upon the head of the
victim was essential to this service. The general import of the im-
position of hands was that of communication. Hence this ceremony
was practiced on various occasions : (1.) In appointing to office,
to signify the transfer of authority. (2.) In imparting any spiritual
gift or blessing. (3.) In substituting one for another, and trans-
ferring the responsibility of one to another. This was the import
of the imposition of hands upon the head of the victim. It was
substituted in the place of the offerer, and the guilt of the one was
symbolically transferred from the one to the other. Hence the
victhn was said to bear the sins of the people ; or their sins were
said to be laid upon it. In the solemn services of the great day
of atonement, the import of this rite is rendered especially clear.
It was commanded that two goats should be selected, one for a sin-
offering and the other for a scape-goat. The two constituted one
sacrifice, as it was impossible that one could signify all that was in-
tended to be taught. Of the scape-goat it is said, " Aaron shall
lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over
him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their trans-
gressions in all their sins, putting them upon the* head of the goat,
.... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a
land not inhabited." This renders it plain that the design of the
imposition of hands was to signify the transfer of the guilt of the
offender to the victim. The nature of these offerings is still further
evident from the fact that the victim was said " to bear the sin " of
the offender. For example, in Isaiah liii. that the servant of the
Lord made " his soul an offering for sin," is explained \)y saying that
" He bare the sin of many ; " that " the chastisement of our peace
was upon him ; " and that " the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all." These and similar expressions do not admit of being un-
derstood of the removal of sin by reformation or spiritual renovation.
They have a fixed and definite meaning throughout the Scriptures.
To bear sin is to bear the guilt and punishment of sin. It may be
§ 6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 505
admitted that the Hebrew word S£i73 may mean to remove^ or hear
away^ as in 1 Samuel xvii. 34 and Judges xvi. 31, although even in
these cases the ordinary sense is admissible. The question, how-
ever, is not what a word may mean, but what it does mean in a
given formula and connection. The word signifies to raise, or lift
up ; to lift up the eyes, the hand, the voice, the head, the heart.
Then it means to lift up in the sense of bearing, as a tree bears its
fruit ; or in the sense of enduring, as sorrow, suffering ; or, of bear-
ing as a burden, and especially the burden of guilt or punishment.
And finally it may have the accessary meaning of bearing away, or
of reinoving. If this should be insisted upon in those cases where
sin is spoken of, then it remains to be asked what is the Scriptural
sense of removing sin, or bearing sin away. That formula means
two things ; first, to remove the guilt of sin by expiation, and sec-
ondly, to remove its defilement and power by spiritual renovation.
One or the other of these ideas is expressed by all the correspond-
ing terms used in the Bible ; Kadalpeiv, to purify, or KaOapia-fiov ttoi^Zv ;
dyia^etv, to cleanse ; and others, as to wash, to blot out, etc. All
these terms are used to express either sacrificial purification bv
blood, or spiritual purification by the renewing of the Holy Ghost.
Which, in any particular case, is intended, is determined by the
context. Therefore, even if the words 1"i37 Stt^n be rendered to re-
move iniquity or sin, the question would still be, Does it mean the
removal of guilt by expiation ; or the removal of pollution by moral
renovation ? In point of fact the words in question always refer
to bearing the punishment and thus removing the guilt of sin, and
never to the removal of moral pollution. This is plain, (1.) Be-
cause Sii?3 is interchanged with ^?3. which never means to remove,
but only to sustain, or bear as a burden. (2.) Because usage de-
termines the meaning of the phrase and is uniform. In Numbers
xiv. 34, it is said, " Ye shall bear your iniquities forty years."
Leviticus v. 1, " If a soul .... hear the voice of swearing, and is
a witness ; .... if he do not utter it, he shall bear his iniquity."
Leviticus v. 17, " He is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity." Leviti-
cus vii. 18, " The soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity."
Leviticus xvii. 16, "• If he wash not .... then he shall bear his
iniquity." Leviticus xix. 8 ; xx. 17 ; xxii. 9, " They shall keep my
ordinance, lest they bear sin for it." Numbers ix. 13, If a man
forbear to keep the passover, he shall be cut off from the people,
" he shall bear his sin." See also Numbers xviii. 22, 32. Ezekiel
iv. 4, 5, it is said to the prophet enduring penance, "So shalt thou
bear the iniquity of the house of Israel." " Thou shalt bear the
500 PART in. Cn. VII. — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
iniquity of the house of Judah forty days." " Lie tliou upon thy left
side .... according to tlie number of tlie da3's tliat thou slialt lie
upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity." Ezekiel xviii. 20, " The
son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father
bear the iniquity of the son." In all these, and in other like cases,
it is simply impossible that " bearing sin " should mean the removal
of sin by moral I'enovation. The expression occurs some forty
times in the Bible, and always in the sense of bearing the guilt or
punishment of sin. It is hardly an exception to this remark that
tliere are a few cases in which nsisn Hti7D means to pardon ; as in
Exodus X. 17 ; xxxii. 32 ; xxxiv. 7 ; Psalms xxxii. 5 (and Ixxxv. 8) ;
for pardon is not the removal of sin morally, but the lifting up, or
removal of its guilt. This being the fact, it determines the nature
of the sin offerings under the law. The victim bore the sin of the
offerer, and died in his stead. An expiation was thereby effected
by the suffering of a vicarious punishment. This also determines
the nature of the work of Christ. If He was an offering for sin,
if He saves us from the ])enalty of the law of God, in the same
way in which the sin offering saved the Israelite from the penalty
of the law of Moses, then He bore the guilt of our sins and en-
dured the penalty in our stead. We may not approve of this method
of salvation. The idea of the innocent bearing the sins of the
guilty, and being punished in his stead, may not be agreeable to
our feelings or to our modes of thinking, but it can hardly be
denied that such is the representation and doctrine of the Scrip-
tures. Our only alternative is to accept that doctrine, or reject the
authority of Scripture directly or indirectly. That is, either to
deny their divine origin, or to explain away their explicit state-
ments. In either case their plain meaning remains untouched.
The German rationalists in general take the former of these two
courses. They admit that the Bible teaches the doctrine of vicari-
ous punishment, but they deny the truth of the doctrine because
they deny the Bible to be the Word of God.
The passages in which Christ is represented as a sacrifice for sin,
are too numerous to be here specially considered. The New
Testament, and particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews, as before
remarked, declares and teaches, that the priesthood of the old
economy was a type of the priesthood of Christ; that the sacrifices
of that dispensation were types of his sacrifice ; that as the blood of
bulls and of goats purified the flesh, so the blood of Christ cleanses
the soul from guilt ; and that as they were expiations effected
by vicarious punishment, in their sphere, so was the sacrifice of
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 507
Christ in the infinitely higher sphere to which his work belongs.
Such being the relation between the Old Economy and the New, the
wliole sacrificial service of the Mosaic institutions, becomes to the
Christian an extended and irresistible proof and exhibition of the
work of Christ as an expiation for the sins of the world, and a satis-
faction to the justice of God.
The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah.
It is not however only in the typical services of the old economy
that this great doctrine was set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah this doctrine is presented with a
clearness and copiousness which have extorted assent from the
most unwilling minds. The prophet in that chapter not only fore-
tells that the Messiah was to be a man of sorrows ; not only that
He was to suffer the greatest indignities and be put to a violent
death ; not only that these sufferings were endured for the benefit
of others ; but that they were truly vicarious, ^. g., that He suffered,
in our stead, the penalty Avhich we had incurred, in order to our
deliverance. This is done not only in those forms of expression
which most naturally admit of this interpretation, but in others
which can, consistently with usage and the analogy of Scripture,
be understood in no other way. To the former class belong such
expressions as the following, " He hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows." Our griefs and our sorrows are the griefs
and sorrows which we deserved. Tliese Christ hore in the sense
of enduring, for He carried them as a burden. " He was wounded
for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "With
his stripes we are healed." " For the transgression of my people
was he stricken." These phrases might be used of the sufferings
of a patriot for his country, of a philanthropist for his fellow-men,
or of a friend for those dear to him. That they however are most
naturally understood of vicarious suffering, can hardly be denied.
And that they were intended by the Spirit of God to be so under-
stood, is plain by their being intermingled with expressions which
admit of no other interpretation. To this class belong the fol-
lowing clauses : First, " the chastisement (or punishment) of
our peace was upon him " That is, the punishment by which our
peace was secured. Of this clause Delitzsch, one of the very first
of living Hebraists, says,^ "Der Begrifi^ der poena vicaria kann
hebrjiisch gar nicht scharfer ausgedriickt werden als in jenen
Worten." " The idea of vicarious punishment cannot be more
1 Commentar zum Brief e an die Hebrder, Leipzig, 1857, p. ''IQ.
508 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
precisely expressed in Hebrew tlian by those words." Secondly,
it is said, " The Lord hath laid on him (caused to fall, or, cast on
him) the iniquity of us all." We have already seen that this is
the language used in the Old Testament to express the transfer of
the guilt of the offender to the victim slain in his stead. They have
a definite Scriptural meaning, which cannot be denied in this case
without doing open violence to admitted rules of interpretation.
" If," says Dr. J. Addison Alexander,^ " vicarious suffering can
be described in words, it is so described in these two verses;" i. e.,
the verses in which this clause occurs. Thirdly, it is said of the
Messiah that He made, or was to make " his soul an offering for
sin." The Hebrew word is UWi^, guilt, debt ; and then an offering
which bears guilt and expiates it. It is the common word in the
Levitical law for " trespass offering." Michaelis in his marginal
annotations, remarks on this word (Isaiah liii. 10), " Delictum
significat, ut notet etiam sacrificium, cui delictum imputatum est.
Vide passim, inprimis Lev. iv. 3 ; v. 6, 7, 16 ; vii. 1, etc., etc.
.... Recte etiam Raschi ad h. 1. ' Ascham,' inquit, ' significat
satisfactionem, sen jytron, quod quis alteri exsolvit, in quem deli-
quit, Gallice, Amande, /. e. mulcta.' " The literal meaning of the
words, therefore, is, His soul was made a satisfaction for sin.
Fourthly, it is said, " My righteous servant shall justify many ; for
he shall bear their iniquities." " He was numbered with the
transgressors, and he bare the sin of many." It has already been
shown that to " bear sin " never means to sanctify, to effect a moral
change by removing the power and pollution of sin, but uniformly,
in the sacrificial language of the Bible, to bear the guilt or penalty
for sin.
Passages of the New Testament in which the Work of Christ is set
forth as Sacrifice.
In Romans iii. 25, it is said. He was set forth as " a propitiation
through faith in his blood." The word here used is IXaaTrjpLov, the
neuter form of the adjective iXao-rj^ptos (" propitiatory, expiatory"),
used substantively. It therefore means, as Robinson and other
lexicographers define it, and as the great body of interpreters
explain it, " an expiatory sacrifice." The meaning of the word is
determined by the context and confirmed by parallel passages.
The design of setting forth Christ as a 'iXa(TTi]piov was precisely
that which an expiatory sacrifice was intended to acco!n])lish,
namely, to satisfy justice, that God might be just in the forgiveness
1 The Later Prophecies of Isaiah, New York, 1847, p. 26-t.
§6.J PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 509
of sin. And tlie SiKaioavvr] of God manifested in the sacrifice of
Christ, was not his benevolence, but that form of justice which
demands the punishment of sin. " It is a fundamental idea of
Scripture," says Delitzsch, " that sin is expiated {^<^T) by punish-
ment, as nmrder by the death of the murderer." ^ Again, " Where
there is shedding of blood and of life, there is violent death, and
where a violent death is (judicially) inflicted, there there is mani-
festation of vindicatory justice, der strafenden Gerechtigkeit." ^ In
like manner, in Romans viii. 8, the Apostle says, God sent his Son
as a sin offering Qirepl ajuapna?, which in Hellenistic Greek means an
offering for sin, Hebrews x. 6), and thereby condemned sin in the
flesh, that is, in the flesh or person of Christ. And thus it is that
we are justified, or the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us.
The same Apostle, in Galatians i. 4, says that Christ " gave himself
for our sins." That is, He gave Himself unto death as a sacrifice
for our sins that He might effect our redemption. Such is the plain
meaning of this passage, if understood according to the established
usage of the Scripture. " The idea of satisfaction," says Meyer,
on this passage, "lies not in the force of the preposition [vTrep] but
in the nature of the transaction, in dem ganzen Sachverhiiltniss."
In Ephesians v. 2, it is said Christ gave " himself for us, an offer-
ing and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." His
offering was a sacrifice (^vo-tW). His blood was shed as an expia-
tion. The question, says Meyer, whether Christ is here repre-
sented as a sin offering, " is decided not so much by iwep ^/xwv as
by the constant New Testament, and specially the Pauline, concep-
tion of the death of Christ as a tAacrrjjptov." Hebrews ix. 14, is
especially important and decisive. The Apostle, in the context,
contrasts the sacrifices of the law with that of Christ. If the for-
mer, consisting of the blood of irrational animals, nothing but the
principle of animal life, could avail to effect external or ceremonial
purification, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who was
possessed of an eternal spirit, or divine nature, and offered Him-
self without spot unto God, avail to the purification of the con-
science, ^. e., effect the real expiation of sin. Tlie purification
spoken of in both members of this comparison, is purification from
guilt, and not spiritual renovation. The Old Testament sacrifices
were expiatory and not reformatory, and so was the sacrifice of
Christ. The certain result and ultimate design in both cases was
reconciliation to the favour and fellowship of God ; but the neces-
sary preliminary condition of such reconciliation was the expiation
1 Commentar zum Brief e an die Hebrder, p. 720. 2 Jdid. p. 719.
510 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
of guilt. Again, toward the end of the same chapter, the Apostle
says that Christ was not called upon to "offer himself often, ....
for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the
•world : but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to
put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The offering which He
made was Himself. Its design and effect were to put away sin ;
i. g., to put away sin as was done by expiatory sacrifices. This is
confirmed by what follows. Christ came the first time " to bear
the sins of many ; " He is to come the second time "without sin,"
without that burden which, on his first advent. He had voluntarily
assumed. He was then bunlened with our sins in the sense
in which the ancient sacrifices bore the sins of the people. He
bore their guilt ; that is, he assumed the responsibility of making
satisfaction for them to the justice of God. When He comes the
second time, it will not be as a sin offering, but to consummate the
salvation of his people. The parallel passage to this is found in 2
Corinthians v. 21 : " He hath made him to be sin for us who knew
no sin." The design of the Apostle is to explain how it is that God
is reconciled unto the world, not imputing unto men their trespasses.
He is free thus to pardon and treat as righteous those who in them-
selves are unrighteous, because for us and in our stead He who
was without sin was treated as a sinner. The sense in which Christ
was treated as a sinner is, says Meyer, in loco " in dem er nlimlich
die Todesstrafe erlitt, in that he suffered the punishment of death.''''
Here again the idea of the poena vicaria is clearly expressed.
In Hebrews x. 10, we are said to be " sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The word
ayia^ctr, here rendered sanctify, means to cleanse. Sin is, in Scrip-
ture, always regarded as a defilement in both its aspects of guilt
and moral turpitude. As guilt, it is cleansed by blood, by sacrifi-
cial expiation ; as defilement, by the renewing of the Holy Ghost.
Which kind of purification is intended is determined in each case
bv the context. If the purification is effected by sacrifice, by the
blood or death of Christ, then the removal of guilt is intended.
Hence, all the passages in Avhich we are said to be saved, or recon-
ciled unto God, or purified, or sanctified by the blood or death of
Christ, must be regarded as so many assertions that He was an
expiatory sacrifice for sin. In this passage the meaning of the
Apostle cannot be mistaken. He is again contrasting the sacrifices
of the Old Testament with that of Christ. They were ineffectual,
the latter was of sovereign efficacy. " Sacrifice and oflering
thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, 1 come
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 511
to do thy will." By which Avill, i. e., by the execution of this
purpose of sending his incarnate Son, we are cleansed by the one
offering up of his body. The ancient sacrifices, he says (verse 11),
had to be constantly repeated. "But this man, after he had
offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of
God." " For by one offering he hath perfected forever (jeTeXuwKer,
brought to the end contemplated by a sacrifice) them that are
sanctified," i. e., cleansed from guilt. That sacrificial cleansing is
here intended is plain, for the effect of it is pardon. " Their sins
and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of
these is, there is no more offering for sin." And in verse 26, we
are taught that for those who reject the sacrifice of Christ there
remains " no more sacrifice for sins ; but a certain fearful looking
for of judgment." It was pardon, therefore, founded upon the
expiation of sin, that was secured by the sacrifice of Christ. And
this is declared to be the only possible means by which our guilt can
be removed, or the justice of God satisfied. It is to be always
borne in mind, however, that the end of expiation is I'econcillation
with God, and that reconciliation with God involves or secures
conformity to his image and intimate fellowship with Him. The
ultimate design of the work of Christ is, therefore, declared to be
to " bring us to God ; " to " pui'ify unto himself a peculiar j>eople
zealous of good works." The removal of guilt by expiation is,
however, constantly set forth as the absolutely essential preliminary
to this inward subjective reconciliation with God. This is a neces-
sity, as the Scriptures teach, arising out of the nature of God as a
holy and just Being.
What Paul teaches so abundantly of the sacrificial death of Christ
is taught by the Apostle John (First Epistle, ii. 2). Jesus Christ
"is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world." Th« word here used is tAao-/Aos,
propitiation, expiation; from " iAda-/co/xai, to reconcile one's self to
any one by expiation, to appease, to propitiate." And in chapter iv.
10, it is said, " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he
loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
The inconsistency between love, and expiation or satisfaction for
sin, which modern writers so much insist upon, was not perceived
by men who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, In
chapter i. 7, this same A))ostle says, " The blood of Jesus Christ
his Son cleanseth us from all sin." To cleanse, KaOapt^eu', KaOaipetv,
Ka0npia[x6i' TTotelr, dyta(Cetr, Xoveiv (Revelation i. 5) are established sac-
rificial terms to express the removal of the guilt of sin by expia-
tion.
512 PART III. Ch. VU. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
The above are only a part of the passages in which our blessed
Lord is, in the New Testament, set forth as a sin offering, in the
Scriptural sense of that term. What is thus taught is taught by
other forms of expression which imply the expiatory character of
his death, or his priestly function of making satisfaction for sin.
Thus in Hebrews ix. 28, it is said, " Christ was once offered to bear
the sins of many."' This is a quotation from Isaiah liii. 12, where
the same word is used in the Septuagint that the Apostle here
employs. The meaning of tiie Scriptural phrase " to bear sin "
has already been sufficiently discussed. Robinson, who will not be
suspected of theological bias, defines, in his " Greek Lexicon," the
word in question (^dvac/)e/uco) in the formula dveveyKe^i' ras a/xapTia^
TjfjLwv, " to bear up our sins, to take upon oneself and bear our sms,
i. e., to bear the penalty of sin, to make expiation for sin." This
is the sense in which the sacrifices of old were said to bear the sins
of the people, and in which it was said that one man, in God's deal-
ings with his theocratic people, should not bear the sins of another.
Delitzsch, on Hebrews ix. 28, says,^ " This assumption of the
sufferings which the sins of men had caused, into fellowship with
whom He had entered, this bearing as a substitute the punishment
of sins not his own, this expiatory suffering for the sins of others, is
precisely what at'eveyKelv djuaprtas ttoAAcui/ in this passage means, and
is the sense intended in the Italic and Vulgate versions ; ' ad multo-
rum exhaurienda peccata.' " He quotes with approbation the com-
ment of Seb. Schmidt : " Quia mors in hominibus pcena est, Christus
oblatus est moriendo, ut morte sua portaret omnium hominum pec-
cata h. e. omnes peccatorum poenas ext^quaret satisfaciendo." ^
Nearly the same language is used by the Apostle Peter (First
Epistle, ii. 24). "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body
on the tree." Whether dm^epw here means sufferre, to bear or
endure, or sursum ferre, to carry up, the sense is the same. Only
the figure is altered. Christ bore the guilt of our sins. This is
the burden which He sustained ; or which He carried up with Him
when He ascended the cross. In the parallel passage in Isaiah liii.
11, evidently in the Apostle's mind, the words are in the Septua-
gint, TCis djuaprtas avrw auros dvotcrct, where in Hebrew binD'^ is USc'd.
which appears decisive in favour of the rendering in our version,
He " bare our sins," as b^D always means to bear as a burden.
As to the doctrinal meaning of this passage commentators of almost
all classes agree. Wahl, in his " Lexicon," on the word di/a</)epa),
referring to this place, makes it mean " peccatorum poenam et rea-
1 Page 442.
2 Commentnry on Hebrews, Leipzig, 1722.
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 513
turn ultro in se susciplt." Bretschneider (Rationalist) thus defines
the word, " attollo et mihi impono, i. g,, impositum mihi porto,
tropice de poenis : poenain susceptain kio ; Heb. ix. 28 Vide
etiam Num. xiv. 33, apoCa-ova-L rrjv Tcupviiav vixuiv, pcena vestrae perfidiae
illis persolvenda est." Wegscheider, the chief of the systematic
theologians among the Rationalists,^ referring to this passage, 1
Peter ii. 24, says that almost all the New Testament writers regard
the death of Christ "-tanquam [mortem] expiatoriam, eandemque
vicariam, velut poenam peccatorum hominum omnium ab ipso sus-
ceptam, etc." Calvin does not go beyond these Rationalists ; his
comment is, " Sicuti sub lege peccatoi', ut reatu solvei'etur, victimam
substituebat suo loco : ita Christus maledictionem peccatis nostris
debitam in se suscepit, ut ea coram Deo expiaret. Hoc beneficium
sophistae in suis scholis, quantum possunt, obscurant."
Another form of expression used by the sacred writers clearly
teaches the expiatory character of Christ's work. Under the old
economy, the great function of the high priest was to make expia-
tion for sin, and thereby restore the people to the favour of God,
and secure for them the blessings of the covenant under which they
lived. All this was typical of Christ and of his work. He came
to save his people from their sins, to restore them to the favour of
God, and to secure for them the enjoyment of the blessings of the
new and better covenant of which He is the mediator. He, there-
fore, assumed our nature in order tliat He might die, and by death
effect our reconciliation with God. For as He did not undertake
the redemption of angels, but the redemption of man, it was the
nature of man that He assumed. He was made in all things like
unto his brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God, ei's to tXao-Keo-^at ras a/xapTtas toC
Xaov, to make expiation for the sins of the people. The word lAacr-
Ko/xai. (or e^tXao-Ko/xat) is the technical word in Hellenistic Greek
to express the idea of expiation. In common Greek, the word
means propitium reddere, and in the passive form it is used in this
sense in the Septuagint as in Psalm Ixxix. 9. But in the middle and
deponent foi'm followed by tlie word sins in the accusative, it always
expresses the act by which that in sin is removed which hinders
God from being propitious. This is the precise idea of expiation.
Hence the word is so constantly rendered in the Vulgate by expiare^
and is in Greek the rendering of -i^S. Hence Christ as He who
renders God propitious to us is called the tAacr/x,os Trepl rwr afxapTtw
rjfiwv in 1 John ii. 2, and lAaor^ptov in Romans iii. 25.
1 Jnstitutioncs Thtvloyke, § 136, 5th edit. Halle, 1826, p. 424.
VOL. II. 33
514 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
Still another form in which the doctrine of expiation is taught is
found in those passages wliich refer our reconciliation to God to
the death of Christ. The Greek word used to express this idea in
Romans v. 10 ; 2 Corinthians v. 18, 19, 20, is KaTaXXdaatw, to ex-
change, or to change the relation of one person to another, from
enmity to friendship. In Ephesians ii. 16 ; Colossians i. 20, 21,
the word used is aTroKaToAXaTTeiv, only an intensive form, to recon-
cile fully. When two parties are at enmity a reconciliation may
be effected by a change in either or in both. When, therefore, it
is said that we are reconciled to God, it only means that peace is
restored between Him and us. Whether this is effected by our
enmity towards Him being removed, or by his justice in regard to
us being satisfied, or whether both ideas are in any case included,
depends on the context where the word occurs, and on the anal-
ogy of Scripture. In the chief passage, Romans v. 10, the obvious
meaning is that the reconciliation is effected by God's justice being
satisfied, so that He can be favourable to us in consistency with his
own nature. This is plain, —
1. Because the means by which the reconciliation is effected is
" the death of his Son." The design of sacrificial death is expia-
tion. It would be to do violence to all Scriptural usage to make
the proximate design and effect of a sacrifice the removal of the
sinner's enmity to God.
2. " Being reconciled by the death of his Son," in verse 10, is
parallel to the clause " being justified by his blood " in verse 9.
The one is exchanged for the other, as different forms of expressing
the same idea. But justification is not sanctification. It does not
express a subjective change in the sinner. And, therefore, the
reconciliation here spoken of cannot express any such change.
3. Those reconciled are declared to be e^Opot, in the passive sense
of the word, "those who are the objects of God's just displeasure."
They are guilty. Justice demands their punishment. The death
of Chi'ist, as satisfying justice, reconciles God to us ; effects peace,
so that we can be received into favour.
4. What is here taught is explained by all those passages which
teach the method by which the reconciliation of God and man is
effected, namely, by the expiation of sin. Meyer, on this passage,
says, '^ KaTrjWayrjixev and KaraXXayivm must of necessity be understood
passively : ausgesohnt mit Gott, atoned for in the sight of God ;
so that he no longer is hostile to us ; he has laid aside his anger,
and we are made partakers of his grace and favour." T^^a same
doctrine is taught in Ephesians ii. 16. " That he might reconcile
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 515
both unto God in one body by the cross." Here again the recon-
cihation of God with man is effected by the cross or deatli of Christ,
which, removing the necessity for the punishment of sinners, ren-
ders it possible for God to manifest towards them his love. The
change is not in man, but, humanly speaking, in God ; a change
from the purpose to punish to a purpose to pardon and save. There
is, so to speak, a reconciliation of God's justice and of his love ef-
fected by Christ's bearing the penalty in our stead. In 2 Corinth-
ians v. 18, it is said, God " hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus
Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." This
does not mean that God changed our heart, and made us love Him,
and appointed the Apostle to announce that fact. It can only mean
that through Christ, through what He did and suffered for us,
peace is restored between God and man, who is able and willing
to be gracious. This is the gospel which Paul was commissioned
to announce, namely, as follows in the next verse, God is bringing
about peace ; He was in Christ effecting this peace, and now is
ready to forgive sin, L e., not to impute unto men their trespasses;
and therefore the Apostle urges his readers to embrace this offer
of mercy, to be reconciled unto God; ^. e., to accept his overture
of reconciliation. For it has a sure foundation. It rests on the
substitution and vicarious death of Christ. He was made sin for
us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is
impossible, therefore, that the reconciliation of which the Apostles
speak as effected by the cross or death of Christ, should, in its pri-
mary and main aspect, be a subjective change in us from enmity
to the love of God. It is such a reconciliation as makes God our
friend ; a reconciliation which enables Him to pardon and save
sinners, and which they are called upon most gratefully to embrace.
It is clearly, therefore, the doctrine of the New Testament, that
Jesus Christ our Lord saves his people by acting for them the part
of a priest. For this office He had all the requisite qualifications ;
He was thereto duly appointed, and He performed all its functions.
He was an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of men. He is not only
repeatedly declared to be a sin offering in the Old Testament sense
of that term ; but He is said to have borne our sins ; to have made
expiation for the sina of the people ; and to have reconciled us,
who were the just objects of the divine wrath, to God by his
death, by his cross, by the sacrifice of Himself. These representa-
tions are so frequent ; they are so formally stated, so illustrated,
and so applied, as to render them characteristic. They constitute
the essential element of the Scriptural doctrine concerning the
method of salvation.
516 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
Christ our Redeemer.
There is a third class of passages equally numerous and equally
important. Christ is not only set forth as a Priest and as a sacri-
fice, but also as a Redeemer, and his work as a Redemption. Re-
demption is deliverance from evil by the payment of a ransom.
This idea is expressed by the words dTroAvVpwcns, from XvTpov, and
the verbs Avrpow, dyo/aa^o) (Jto purchase')^ and i^ayopd^m (to buy from ^
or deliver out of the possession or power of any one by purchase).
The price or ransom paid for our redemption is always said to be
Christ himself, his blood, his death. As the evils consequent on our
apostasy from God are manifold, Christ's work as a Redeemer is
presented in manifold relations in the word of God.
Redemption from the Penalty of the Law.
1. The first and most obvious consequence of sin, is subjection
to the penalty of the law. The wages of sin is death. Every sin
of necessity subjects the sinner to the wrath and curse of God.
The first step, therefore, in the salvation of sinners, is their re-
demption from that curse. Until this is done they are of necessity
separated from God. But alienation from Him of necessity in-
volves both misery and subjection to the power of sin. So long as
men are under the curse, they are cut off from the only source of
holiness and life. Such is the doctrine taught throughout the
Bible, and elaborately in Romans, chapters vi. and vii. In effecting
the salvation of his people, Christ " redeemed them from the curse
of the law," not by a mere act of sovereignty, or power ; not by
moral influence restoring them to virtue, but by being " made a
curse for them." No language can be plainer than this. The curse
is the penalty of the law. We were subject to that penalty. Christ
has redeemed us from that subjection by being made a curse for
us. (Galatians iii. 13.) That the infinitely exalted and holy Son
of God should be " accursed " (eTrtKaTtt/aaros), is so awful an idea,
that the Apostle justifies the use of such language by quoting the
declaration of Scripture, " Cursed is every one that hangeth on a
tree." Suffering, and especially the suffering of death, judicially
inflicted on account of sin, is penal. Those who thus suffer bear
the curse or penalty of the law. The sufferings of Cln-ist, and
especially his c^^ath upon the cross, were neither calamities, nor
chastisements designed for his own good, nor symbolical or didactic
exhibitions, designed to illustrate and enforce truth, and exert a
moral influence on others : these are all subordinate and collateral
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 517
ends. Nor were they the mere natural consequences of his be-
coming a man and subjecting Himself to the common lot of human-
ity. They were divine inflictions. It pleased the Lord to bruise
Him. He was smitten of God and afflicted. These sufferings
were declared to be on account of sin, not his own, but ours. . He
bore our sins. The chastisement of our peace was on Him. And
they were designed as an expiation, or for the satisfaction of jus-
tice. They had, therefore, all the elements of punishment, and
consequently it was in a strict and proper sense that He was made
a curse for us. All this is included in what the Apostle teaches in
this passage (Gal. iii. 13), and its immediate context.
Redemption from the Law.
2. Nearly allied to this mode of representation are those pas-
sages in which Christ is said to have delivered us from the law.
Redemption from bondage to the law includes not only deliverance
from its penalty, but also from the obligation to satisfy its demands.
This is the fundamental idea of Paul's doctrine of justification.
The law demands, and from the nature of God, must demand per-
fect obedience. It says. Do this and live ; and, " Cursed is every
one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them." No man since the fall is able to fulfil
these demands, yet He must fulfil them or perish. The only pos-
sible method, according to the Scriptures, by which men can be
saved, is that they should be delivered from this obligation of per-
fect obedience. This, the Apostle teaches, has been effected by
Christ. He was " made under the law to redeem them that were
under the law." (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) Therefore, in Romans vi. 14,
he says to believers, " Ye are not under the law, but under grace."
And this redemption fi-om the law in Romans vii. 4, is said to be
"by the body of Christ." Hence we are justified not by our own
obedience, but " by the obedience " of Christ. (Rom. v. 18, 19.)
Redemption in this case is not mere deliverance, but a true re-
demption, i. e., a deliverance effected by satisfying all the just
claims which are against us. The Apostle says, in Galatians iv.
5, that we are thus redeemed from the law, in order " that we
might receive the adoption of sons " ; that is, be introduced into
the state and relation of sons to God. Subjection to the law, in
our case, was a state of bondage. Those under the law are, there-
fore, called slaves, BovXoi. From this state of bondage they are
redeemed, and introduced into the liberty of the sons of God.
This redemption includes freedom from a slavish spirit, which is
518 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
supplanted by a spirit of adoption, filling the heart with reverence,
love, and confidence in God as our reconciled Father.
Redemption from the Power of Sin.
3. As deliverance from the curse of the law secures restoration
to the favour of God, and as the love of God is the life of the
soul, and restores us to his image, therefore in redeeming us from
the curse of the law, Christ redeems us also from the power of
sin. " Whosoever committeth sin," saith our Lord, " is the ser-
vant (the slave) of sin." This is a bondage from which no man
can deliver himself. To effect this deliverance was the great ob-
ject of the mission of Christ. He gave Himself that He might
purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. He
died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us unto God.
He loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might pre-
sent it unto Himself a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle or
any such thing. This deliverance from sin is a true redemption. A
deliverance effected by a ransom, or satisflxction to justice, was the
necessary condition of restoration to the favour of God; and res-
toration to his favour was the necessary condition of holiness.
Therefore, it is said, Galatians i. 3, Cln-ist " gave Himself for our
sins, that He might deliver us (J-^ik-qTaC) from this pi'esent evil
world." Titus ii. 14, " Who gave himself for us that he might
redeem us from all iniquity." 1 Peter i. 18, 19, " Ye were not
redeenwd with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your
vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot." Deliverance by sacrifice was deliverance by
ransom. Therefore, here as elsewhere, the two modes of state-
ment are combined. Thus our Lord in Matthew xx. 28, Mark x.
45, says, " The Son of Man came .... to give his life a ransom
for many (avrX, not merely vivlp, TroWoir). " The idea of substitution
cannot be more definitely expressed. In these passages our de-
liverance is said to be effected by a ransom. \\\ Matthew xxvi. 28,
our Lord says that his blood was " shed for many for the remission
of sins." Here his death is presented in the light of a sacrifice.
The two modes of deliverance are therefore identical. A ransom
was a satisfaction to justice, and a sacrifice is a satisfaction to jus-
tice.
Redemption from the Power of Satan.
4. The Scriptures teach that Christ redeems us from the power
of Satan. Satan is said to be the prince and god of this world.
§ 6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 519
His kingdom is the kingdom of darkness, in which all men, since
Adam, are born, and in which they remain, until translated into
the kingdom of God's dear Son. They are his subjects " taken
captive by him at his will." (2 Tim. ii. 26.) The first promise
was that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head.
Christ came to destroy the works of the devil ; to cast him down
from his place of usurped power, to deliver those who are subject
to his dominion. (2 Cor. iv. 4 ; Col. ii. 15.) The fact of this
redemption of his people from the power of Satan, and the mode
of its accomplishment, are clearly stated in Hebrews ii. 15. The
eternal Son of God, who in the first chapter of that epistle, is
proved to be God, the object of the worship of angels, the creator
of heaven and earth, eternal and immutable, in verse 14 of the
second chapter, is said to have become man, in order " that through
death He might destroy him that had the power of death, and de-
liver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject
to bondage." It is here taught, (1.) That men are in a state of
bondao-e through fear of the wrath of God on account of sin.
(2.) That in this state they are in subjection to Satan who has the
power of death over them ; i. e., the ability and opportunity of in-
fiicting on them the sufferings due to them as sinners. (3.) That
from this state of bondage and of subjection to the power of Satan,
they are delivered by the death of Christ. His death, by satisfying
the justice of God, frees them from the penalty of the law ; and
freedom from the curse of the law involves freedom from the power
of Satan to inflict its penalty. " The strength of sin is the law.'*
(1 Cor. XV. 56.) What satisfies the law deprives sin of the power
to subject us to the wrath of God. And thus redemption from the
law, is redemption from the curse, and consequently redemption
from the power of Satan. This Scriptural representation took
such hold of the imagination of many of the early fathers, that
they dwelt upon it, almost to the exclusion of other and more im-
portant aspects of the work of Christ. They dallied with it and
wrought it out into many fanciful theories. These theories have
passed away ; the Scriptural truth which underlay them, remains.
Christ is our Redeemer from the power of Satan, as well as from
the curse of the law, and from the dominion of sin. And if a Re-
deemer, the deliverance which He effected was by means of a
ransom. Hence He is often said to have purchased his people.
They are his because He bought them. " Know ye not that ....
ye are not your own ? " says the Apostle, " For ye are bought
with a price." (1 Cor. vi. 20.) God, in Acts xx. 28, is said
520 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
to have purchased the Church " with his own blood." " Ye were
redeemed (dehvered by purchase) .... with the precious blood
of Christ." (1 Pet. i. 18, 19.) " Thou art worthy .... for
thou has purchased us (^yo'pao-as) for God by thy blood." (Rev.
V. 9.)
Final Redemption from all Evil.
5. Christ redeems us not only from the curse of the law, from
the law itself as a covenant of works, from the power of sin, and
from the dominion of Satan, but also from all evil. This evil
is the consequence of the curse of the law, and being redeemed
from that we are delivered from all evil. Hence the word redemp-
tion is often used for the sum of all the benefits of Christ's work,
or for the consummation of the great scheme of salvation. Thus
our Lord says, Luke xxi. 28, that when the Son of Man shall ap-
pear in his glory, then his disciples may be sure that their " redemp-
tion draweth nigh." They are sealed unto the day of redemption.
(Eph. i. 14.) Christ has " obtained eternal redemption." (Heb.
ix. 12.) Believers are represented as waiting for their redemp-
tion. (Rom. viii. 23.)
It is therefore the plain doctrine of Scripture that, as before said,
Christ saves us neither by the mere exercise of power, nor by his
doctrine, nor by his example, nor by the moral influence which He
exerted, nor by any subjective influence on his people, whether
natural or mystical, but as a satisfaction to divine justice, as an
expiation for sin and as a ransom from the curse and authority of
the law, thus reconciling us to God, by making it consistent with
his perfections to exercise mercy toward sinners, and then renew-
ing them after his own image, and finally exalting them to all the
dignity, excellence, and blessedness of the sons of God.
Argument from Related Doctrines.
All the doctrines of grace are intimately connected. They stand
in such relation to each other, that one of necessity supposes the
truth of the others. The common Church doctrine of the satisfac-
tion of Christ, therefore, is not an isolated doctrine. It is assumed
in all that the Scriptures teach of the relation between Christ and
his people ; of the condition on which our interest in his redemption
is suspended ; and of the nature of the benefits of that redemption.
1. No doctrine of the Bible, relating to the plan of salvation,
is more plainly taught or more wide reaching than that which
concerns the union between Christ and his people. That union,
in one aspect, was from eternity, we were in Him before the
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 521
foundation of the world ; given to Him of the Father, to redeem
from the estate of sin and misery, into which it was foreseen
our race would by transgression fall. It was for the accomplish-
ment of this purpose of mercy that He assumed our nature, was
born of a woman, and did and suffered all that He was called upon
to do and to endure in working out our salvation. He did not,
therefore, come into the world for Himself It was not to work out
a righteousness of his own to entitle Him to the exaltation and
power which in our nature He now enjoys. In virtue of the God-
head of his personality. He was of necessity infinitely exalted above
all creatures. He came for us. He came as a representative.
He came in the same relation to his people, which Adam, in the
original covenant, bore to the whole race. He came to take their
place ; to be their substitute, to do for them, and in their name,
what they could not do for themselves. All He did, therefore,
was vicarious ; his obedience and his sufferings. The parallel be-
tween Adam and Christ, the two great representatives of man, the
two federal heads, the one of all his natural descendants, the other
of all given Him by the Father, is carried out into its details in
Romans v. 12—21. It is assumed or imj)Hed, however, everywhere
else in the sacred volume. What Adam did, in his federal capac-
ity, was in law and justice regarded as done by all whom he repre-
sented. And so all that Christ did and suffered as a federal head,
was in law and justice done or suffered by his people. Therefore,
as we were condemned for the disobedience of Adam, so we are
justified for the obedience of Christ. As in Adam all died, so in
Christ are all made alive. Hence Christ's death is said to be our
death, and we are said to rise with Him, to live with Him, and to
be exalted, in our measure, in his exaltation. He is the head and
we are the body. The acts of the head, are the acts of the whole
mystical person. The ideas, therefore, of legal substitution, of
vicarious obedience and punishment, of the satisfaction of justice
by one for all, underlie and pervade the whole scheme of redemp-
tion. They can no more be separated from that scheme than the
warp can be separated from the woof without destroying the whole
texture.
2. In like manner these same truths are implied in what sinners
are required to do in order to become the subjects of the redemp-
tion of Christ. It is not enough that we should receive his doc-
trines ; or endeavour to regulate our lives by his moral precepts ;
or that we confide in his protection, or submit to his control as one
into whose hands all power in heaven and earth has been com-
522 PART in. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
mitted. It is not enough that we should open our hearts to all the
influences for good which flow from his person or his work. We
must trust in Him. We must renounce our own righteousness,
and confide in his for our acceptance with God. We must give
up the idea that we can satisfy the demands of God's justice and
law, by anything we can do, suffer, or experience, and rely exclu-
sively on what He, as our representative, substitute, and surety,
has done and suffered in our stead. This is what tlie gospel de-
mands. And this, the world over, is precisely what every true
believer, no matter what his theological theories may be, actually
does. But this act of self-renunciation and of faith in Christ as the
ground of our forgiveness and acceptance with God, supposes Him
to be our substitute, who has satisfied all the demands of law and
justice in our stead.
3. If we turn to the Scriptural account of the benefits which we
receive from Christ, we find that this view of the nature of his
work, is therein necessarily implied. We are justified through
Him. He is our righteousness. We are made the righteousness
of God in Him. But justification is not a subjective work. It is
not sanctlfication. It is not a change wrought in us either naturally
or supernaturally. It is not the mere executive act of a sovereign,
suspending the action of the law, or granting pardon to the guilty.
It is the opposite of condemnation. It is a declaration that the
claims of justice are satisfied. Tiiis is the uniform meaning of the
Hebrew and Greek words employed in Scripture, and of the cor-
responding words in all other languages, as far as those languages
are cultivated to express what passes in the consciousness of men.
But if God, in justifying sinners, declares that with regard to them
the claims of justice are satisfied, it confessedly is not on the ground
that the sinner himself has made tliat satisfaction, but that Christ
has made it in his behalf.
The doctrine of sanctification also, as presented in the Scriptures,
is founded on the substitution of Christ. Sanctification is not a work
of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character
effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy
Spirit ; although on that account only the more rationally. The
first step in the process is deliverance from the curse of the law bv
the body, or death of Christ. Then God being reconciled. He ad-
mits us into fellowship with Himself. But as the sinner is only
imperfectly sanctified, he is still in his state and acts far from being
in himself an object of the divine complacency. It is only as united
to Christ and represented by Him, that he enjoys the continuance
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 523
of the divine favour, which is his life, and constantly receives fi'om
Him the gift of the Holy Spirit. So that the life that the believer
lives, is Christ living in him. Thus in the whole process of salva-
tion the ideas of substitution, of representation, of Christ's being and
doing for us, all that we are required to be and to do, are of neces-
sity involved. And even to the last we are saved only in Him.
It is in virtue of this union that believers are raised from the dead,
admitted into heaven, and receive the crown of eternal life. It is
not for what they have done, nor for what they have been made,
but solely for what has been done in their stead that they are made
partakers of his life, and, ultimately, of his glory.
Argument from the Religious Experience of Believers.
By the religious experience of Christians is meant those states
and acts of the mind produced by " the things of the Spirit," or
by the truths of God's Word as revealed and applied by the Holy
Ghost. We are clearly taught in Scripture that the truth is not
only objectively presented in the Word, but that it is the gracious
office of the Spirit, as a teacher and guide, to lead the people of
God properly to understand the truths thus outwardly revealed, and
to cause them to produce their proper effect on the reason, the feel-
ings, the conscience, and the life. What the Holy Spirit thus leads
the people of God to believe must be true. No man however is
authorized to appeal to his own inward experience as a test of truth
for others. His experience may be, and in most cases is, determined
more or less by his peculiar training, his own modes of thinking,
and diverse other modifying influences. But this does not destroy
the value of religious experience as a guide to the knowledge of the
truth. It has an authority second only to that of the Word of God.
One great source of error in theology has always been the neglect
of this inward guide. Men have formed their opinions, or framed
their doctrines on philosophical principles, or moral axioms, and
thus have been led to adopt conclusions which contradict the in-
ward teachings of the Spirit, and even their own religious con-
sciousness. The only question is. How can we distinguish the
human from the divine ? How can we determine what in our
experience is due to the teaching of the Spirit, and what to other
influences ? The answer to these questions is, (1.) That what is
conformed to the infallible standard in the Scriptures, is genuine,
and what is not thus conformed is spurious. The Bible contains
not only the truths themselves, but a record of the effects produced
on the mind when they are applied by the Holy Spirit. (2.) An-
524 PART m. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
other test is universality. What all true Christians experience
must be referred to a cause common to all. It cannot be accounted
for by what is peculiar to individuals or to denominations. (3.) A
subordinate test, but one of great value to the individual, is to be
found in the nature of the experience itself, and its effects upon the
heart and life. A religious experience which makes a man self-
complacent, self-righteous, proud, censorious, and persecuting, is
certaiidy not to be I'eferred to the Spirit of holiness and love. But
if a man's experience renders liim humble, meek, contrite, forgiving,
and long-suffering ; if it leads him to believe all things and hope
all things ; if it renders him spiritually' and heavenly minded ; if it
makes it Christ for him to live ; in short, if it produces the same
effect on him that the truth produced on the prophets and apostles,
there can be little doubt that it is due to the teaching and influence
of the Holy Ghost.
It is certainly an unanswerable argument in favour of the divinity
of Christ, for example, as a doctrine of the Bible, that all true
Christians look up to Christ as God ; that they render Him the
adoration, the love, the confidence, the submission, and the devo-
tion which are due to God alone, and which the apprehension of
divine perfection only can produce. It is certainly a proof that the
Scriptures teach that man is a fallen being, that he is guilty and
defiled by sin, that he is utterly unable to free himself from the
burden and power of sin, that he is dependent on the grace of God
and the power of the Spirit, if these truths are inwrought into the
experience of all true believers. In like manner, if all Christians
trust in Christ for their salvation ; if they look to Him as their
substitute, obeying and suffering in their stead, bearing their sins,
sustaining the curse of the law in their place ; if they regard Him
as the expiatory sacrifice to take away their guilt and satisf}'- the
justice of God in their behalf; if they thank and bless Him for
having given Himself as a ransom for their redemption from the
penalty and obligation of the law as prescribing the condition of
salvation, and from the dominion of Satan, from the power of sin
and from all its evil consequences ; then, beyond doubt, these are
the truths of God, revealed by the Spirit in the word, and taught
by the Spirit to all who submit to his guidance. That such is the
experience of true believers in relation to the work of Christ, is
plain, (1.) Because this is the form and manner in which holy men
of old whose experience is recorded in the Scriptures, expressed
their relation to Christ and their obligations to Him. He was to
them an expiatory sacrifice ; a ransom ; an IXaafioi or propitiation.
§6.] PROOF OF THE DOCTRINE. 525
They regarded Him as made a curse for them ; as bearing their
punishment, or "the chastisement of their peace." They received
the " sprinkHng of the blood of Jesus Christ," as the only means
of being cleansed from the guilt of their sins, and of restoration t«
the favour of God and holiness of heart and life. This was un-
doubtedly their experience as it is recorded in the Bible. (2.) In
the second place, from the times of the Apostle to the present day,
the people of God have had the same inward convictions and feel-
ings. This is clear from their confessions of faith, from their litur
gies and prayers, from their hymns, and from all the records of
their inward religious life. Let any one look over the hymns of
the Latin Church, of the Moravians, the Lutherans, the Reformed,
of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Independents,
and Congregationalists, and see what truths on this subject consti-
tuted and now constitute the food and atmosphei'e of their religious
life : -
" Jesus, my God, Thy blood alone hath power sufficient to atone."
" To the dear fountain of Thy blood, incarnate God, I fly."
" My soul looks back to see the burdens Thou didst bear.
When hanging on the cursed tree, and hopes her sins were there."
" Ein Lammlein geht und tragt die Schuld,
Der Welt and iiiren Kinder."
"Geh hin, nimm dich der Siinder an,
Die auch kein Engel retten kann
Von meines Zornes Ruthen !
" Die Straf ' ist schwer, der Zorn ist gross;
Du kannst und sollst sie machen los
Durch Sterben und durch Bluten."
Does any Christian object to such hymns? Do they not
express his inmost religious convictions? If thev do not ao-ree
with the speculations of his understanding, do they not express
the feelings of his heart and the necessities of his fallen nature ?
The speculations of the understanding are what man teaches ; the
truths which call forth these feelings of the heart are what the Holy
Ghost teaches.
This argument may be presented in another light. It may be
shown that no other theory of the work of Christ does correspond
with the inward experience of God's people. The theory that the
work of Christ was didactic ; that it was exemplary ; that its prox-
imate design was to produce a subjective change in the sinner or a
moral impression on the minds of all intelligent creatures ; these
and other theories, contrary to the common Church doctrine, fail
especially in two points. First, they do not account for the inti-
526 PART m. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
mate personal relation between Christ and the believer which is
everywhere recognized in Scripture, and wliich is so precious in the
view of all true Christians. Secondly, they make no provision for
the expiation of sin, or for satisfying the demands of a guilty con-
science, which mere pardon never can appease.
Throughout the New Testament, Christ is represented not only
as the object of worship and of supreme love and devotion, but also
as being to his people the immediate and constant source of life and
of all good. Not Christ as God, but Christ as our Saviour. He
is the head, we are his members. He is the vine, we are the
branches. It is not we that live, but Christ that liveth in us. He
is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemp-
tion. His blood cleanses us from all sins. He redeemed us from
the curse of the law by being made a curse for us. He bore our
sins in his own body on the tree. He is our great High Priest who
ever lives to make intercession for us. It would be easy to show
from the records of the religious life of the Church that believers
have ever regarded Christ in the light in which He is here pre-
sented. The argument is that these representations are not con-
sistent with any moral or governmental theory of the atonement.
There are two hymns which, perhaps, beyond all others, are
dear to the hearts of all Christians who speak the English language.
The one written by Charles Wesley, an Arminian ; the other by
Toplady, a Calvinist. It is hard to see what meaning can be
attached to these hymns by those who hold that Christ died simply
to teach us something, or to make a moral impression on us or
others. How can they say, —
" Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thj' bosom fly " ?
Why should they fly to Him if He be only a teacher or moral
reformer ? What do they mean when they say, —
"Hide me, 0 my Saviour hide " ?
Hide from what? Not from the vindicatory justice of God, for
they admit no such attribute.
" Other refuge have I none; "
refuge from what ?
" All my trust on Thee is laid."
For what do we trust Him ? According to their theory He is not
the ground of our confidence. It is not for his righteousness, but
for our own that we are to be accepted by God. It would seem
that those only who hold the common Church doctrine can say, —
" Thou, O Christ, art all I need."
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 527
All I need as a creature, as a sinner, as guilty, as polluted, as
miserable and helpless ; all I need for time or for eternity. So of
Toplady's precious hymn, —
" Rock of ages, cleft for me ; "
for me personally and individually ; as Paul said he lived " by
faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for we."
" Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side that flowed;
Be of sin the double cure;
Cleanse me from its guilt and power."
Hov^ can such language be used by those who deny the necessity
of expiation ; wlio hold that guilt need not be washed away, that
all that is necessary is that we should be made morally good ? No
one can say, —
" ISTothing in mj' hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling,"
who does not believe that Christ " bore our sins in his own body
on the tree."
It is a historical fact that where false theories of the atonement
prevail, Christ and his work are put in the background. We hear
from the pulpits much about God as a moral governor; much about
the law and obligation, and of the duty of submission ; but little
about Christ, of the duty of fleeing to Him, of receiving Him, of
trusting in Him, of renouncing our own righteousness that we
may put on the righteousness of God ; and little of our union with
Him, of his living in us, and of our duty to live by faith in Him.
Thus new theories introduce a new religion.
§ 7. Objections.
The only legitimate method of controverting a doctrine which
purports to be founded on the Scriptures is the exegetical. If its
advocates undertake to show that it is taught in the Bible, its
opponents are bound to prove that the Bible, understood agreeably
to the recognized laws of interpretation, does not teach it. This
method, comparatively speaking, is little relied upon, or resorted to
by the adversaries of the Church doctrine concerning the satisfac-
tion of Christ. Their main reliance is on objections of two classes:
the one drawn from speculative or philosophical principles ; the
other from the sentiments or feelings. It is not uncommon for
modern writers, especially among the German theologians, to begin
the discussion of tills subject by a review of the Scriptural state-
ments Ir. relation to it. This is often eminently satisfactory. It is
528 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
admitted that Christ saves us as a priest bj offering Himself a sac-
rifice for sin ; that He is a priest and sin offering in the Old Testa-
ment sense of those terms ; and that a priest is a mediator, a repre-
sentative of the people, and an offerer of sacrifices. It is admitted
that the sin offerings of the old dispensation were expiatory sacri-
fices, designed to satisfy the justice of God and to secure the resto-
ration of his favour to the sinner. It is admitted that expiation
was made by substitution and vicarious punishment, that the victim
bore the sins of the offerer and died not only for his benefit, but in
his place. It is further admitted that all this was designed to be
typical of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, and that the New-
Testament teaches that these types were fulfilled in Him ; that He
was the only true priest, and his offering of Himself was the only
available sacrifice for sin ; that He bore the sins of men ; made
expiation for their guilt by taking their place, and sustaining the
penalty of the law and the wrath of God in their stead ; and that
the effect of his satisfaction of justice is that God is in such a sense
reconciled to man, that He can consistently pardon their sins, and
bestow upon them all saving blessings. Having given this exhibi-
tion of what the Scriptures teach on the subject, they go on to
state what the Fathers taught ; how the doctrine was presented
during the Middle Ages, and afterwards by the Reformers ; how
the Rationalists and Supernaturalists of the last generation dealt
with it ; and how the modern speculative theologians have philos-
ophized about it ; and end, generally, by giving in their adhesion
to some one of these modern theories more or less modified. All
the while there stand the Scriptural statements untouched and
unrefuted. They are allowed to go for what they are worth ; but
they are not permitted to control the writers' own convictions.
This course is adopted by different men on different principles.
Sometimes it is upon the distinct denial of the inspiration of the
sacred writers. They are admitted to be honest and faithful. They
may or may not have been the recipients of a supernatural revela-
tion, but they were fallible men, subject to all the influences which
determine the modes of thought and the expressions of the men
of any given age or nation. The sacred writers were Jews, and
accustomed to a religion which had priests and sacrifices. It was,
therefore, natural that they should set forth under figures and in
the use of terms, borrowed from their own institutions, the truths
that Christ saved sinners, and that in the prosecution of that work
He suffered and died. These truths may be retained, but the
form in which they are presented in the Bible may be safely dis-
carded.
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 529
Others, and perhaps the majority of the most popular of this
class of theologians, go further than this. They are willing that
criticism and forced interpretations should make what havoc they
please with the Bible. Any and every book may be rejected from
the canon. Any and every doctrine may be interpreted out of
the sacred pages ; still the only Christianity they value is safe.
Christianity is independent of any form of doctrine. It is a life,
an inward, organic power, which remodels the soul ; which life is
Christianity, because it is assumed to have its origin in Christ.
Others again act on the j)rinciples of that form of rationalism
which has received the name of Dogmatism. The doctrines and
facts of the Bible are allowed to stand as true. They are allowed
to be the proper modes of statement for popular instruction and
impression. But it is assumed to be the office of the theologian to
discover, present, and bring into harmony with his system, the
philosophical truths which underlie these doctrinal statements of
the Bible. And these philosophical truths are assumed to be the
substance of the Scriptural doctrines, of which the doctrines them-
selves are the unessential and mutable forms. Thus the doctrine of
the Trinity is admitted. The form in which it is presented in the
Bible is regarded as its popular form, which it may be useful to
retain for the people. But the real and important truth which
it involves is, that original, unintelligent, unconscious Being (the
Father) comes to conscious existence in the world (the Son), by an
eternal process, and returns by an unceasing flow into the infinite
(the Spirit). It is also admitted that God became flesh, but it was,
as some say, in the whole race of man ; mankind are the manifesta-
tion of God in the flesh ; or, as others say, the Church is his body,
that is, the form in which the incarnation is realized. Christ is
acknowledged to be our saviour from sin, but it is by a purely sub-
jective process. He introduces a new life power into humanity,
which enters into conflict with the evil of our nature, and after a
painful struggle overcomes it. This is called the application of
philosophy to the explanation of Scriptural doctrines. It is patent,
however, that this is not explanation, but substitution. It is the
substitution of the human for the divine ; of the thoughts of men,
which are mere vapour, for the thoughts of God, which are eternal
verities. It is giving a stone for bread, and a scorpion for an egg.
It is, indeed, a very convenient method of getting rid of the
teachings of the Bible, while professing to admit its authority. It
is important, however, to notice the concession involved in these
modes of proceeding. It is acknowledged that the Church doc-
VOL. II. 34
530 PART m. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
trine of a true expiatory sacrifice for sin, of a real satisfaction of
justice by means of the vicarious punishment of sin, is the doctrine
of the Scriptures, as well of the Old Testament as of the New.
Tiiis is all we contend for, and all we care for. If God teaches
this, men may teach wiiat they please.
Moral Objections.
Another class of objections to the Scriptural doctrine of satisfac-
tion, which may be called philosophical, although not of the specu-
lative kind, are those which are founded on certain assumed moral
axioms. It is said to be self-evident that the innocent cannot be
guilty ; and if not guilty he cannot be punished, for punishment is
the judicial infliction of evil on account of guilt. As the Church
doctrine, while maintaining the perfect sinlessness of Christ, teaches
that He bore the guilt of sin, and therefore was regarded and
treated as a sinner, that doctrine assumes both an impossibility and
an act of injustice. It assumes that God regards things as they are
not. He regards the innocent as guilty. This is an impossibility.
And if possible for Him to treat the innocent as guilty, it would be
an act of gross injustice. On this class of objections it may be re-
marked, —
1. That they avail nothing against the plain declaration of the
Scriptures. If the Bible teaches that the innocent may bear the
guilt of the actual transgressor; that He may endure the penalty
incurred in his place, then it is in vain to say that this cannot be
done.
2. If it be said that these moral objections render it necessary
to explain these representations of Scripture as figurative, or as
anthropomorphic modes of expression, as when God is said to have
eyes, to stand, or to walk, then the reply is that these representa-
tions are so didactic, are so repeated, and are so inwrought into
the whole system of Scriptural doctrine, that they leave us no alter-
native but to receive them as the truths of God, or to reject the
Bible as his word.
3. Rejecting the Bible does not help the matter. We cannot
reject the facts of providence. Where is the propriety of saying
that the innocent cannot justly sufi^er for the guilty, when we see
that they actually do thus suffer continually, and everywhere since
the world began ? There is no moral principle asserted in the
Bible, which is not carried out in providence. God says He will
visit the iniquities of the fathers upon their children to the third
and fourth generation of those that hate Him. And so He does,
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 531
and ever has done. Are we so confident in ourselves as to deny-
that there is a just God who governs the world, rather than admit
that the innocent may riglitfully bear the iniquity of the guilty ?
In teaching the doctrine of legal substitution, of the transfer of
guilt from the transgressor to the innocent, of the satisfaction of
justice by vicarious punishment, the Bible asserts and assumes no
moral principle which does not underlie all the providential deal-
ino;s of God with individuals or with nations.
4. Men constantly deceive themselves by postulating as moral
axioms what are nothing more than the forms in which their feel-
ings or peculiar opinions find expression. To one man it is an
axiom that a holy God cannot permit sin, or a benevolent God
allow his creatures to be miserable ; and he, therefore, infers either
that there is no God, or that He cannot control the acts of free
agents. To another it is self-evidently true that a free act can-
not be certain, and therefore that there can be no foreordination,
or foreknowledge, or prediction of the occurrence of such acts.
To another, it is self-evident that a merciful God cannot permit
any portion of his rational creatures to remain forever under the
dominion of sin and suffering. There would be no end of con-
troversy, and no security for any truth whatever, if the strong
personal convictions of individual minds be allowed to determine
what is, or what is not true, what the Bible may, and what it
may not, be allowed to teach. It must be admitted, however,
that there are moral intuitions, founded on the constitution of our
nature, and constituting a primary revelation of the nature of
God, which no external revelation can possibly contradict. The
authority of these intuitive truths is assumed or fully recognized
in the Bible itself. They have, however, their criteria. They
cannot be enlarged or diminished. No man can add to, or de-
tract from, their number. Those criteria are, (1.) They are all
recognized in the Scriptures themselves. (2.) They are univer-
sally admitted as true by all rational minds. (3.) They cannot
be denied. No effort of the will, and no sophistry of the under-
standing can destroy their authority over the reason and con-
science.
5. It is very evident that the principle that " the innocent can-
not justly be punished for the guilty," cannot stand the application
of the above-mentioned criteria. So far from being recognized in
the Bible, it is contrary to its plainest declarations and facts. So far
from being universally received among men as true, it has never
been received at all as part of the common faith of mankind. The
532 PART in. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
substitution of the innocent for the guilty, of victims for transgres-
sors in sacrifice, of one for many ; the idea of expiation by vicarious
punishment, has been familiar to the human mind in all ages. It
has been admitted not only as possible, but as rational, and recog-
nized as indicating the only method by which sinful men can be
reconciled to a just and holy God. It is not, therefore, to be ad-
mitted that it conflicts with any intuition of the reason or of the
conscience ; on the contrary it is congenial with both. It is no doubt
frequently the case that opposition to this doctrine arises from a
misapprehension of the terms in which it is expressed. By guilt
many insist on meaning personal criminality and ill desert ; and by
punishment evil inflicted on the ground of such personal demerit.
In these senses of the words the doctrine of satisfaction and vica-
rious punishment would indeed involve an impossibility. Moral
character cannot be transferred. The Remonstrants were right in
saying that one man cannot be good with another's goodness, any
more than he can be white with another's whiteness. And if pun-
ishment means evil inflicted on the ground of personal demerit,
then it is a contradiction to say that the innocent can be punished.
But if guilt expresses only the relation of sin to justice, and is the
obligation under which the sinner is placed to satisfy its demands,
then there is nothing in the nature of things, nothing in the moral
nature of man, nothing in the nature of God as revealed either in
his providence or in his word, which forbids the idea that this obli-
gation may on adequate grounds be transferred from one to an-
other, or assumed by one in the place of others.
To the head of objections founded on assumed moral axioms
belong those urged by a large class 'of modern, and especially of
German theologians. These theologians have their peculiar views
of the nature of God, of his relation to the world, and of anthro-
pology in all its branches, which underlie and determine all their
theological doctrines. It is denied that Schleiermacher founded a
school ; but it is certain that he introduced a method of theologi-
zing, and advocated principles, which have determined the charac-
ter of the theology of a large class of men, not only in Germany,
but also in England and America : Twesten, Nitsch, Liicke, 01s-
hausen, Ullmann, Lange, Liebner, and even Ebrard in Germany ;
and Morell and Maurice in England, belong to this class of writers.
In this country what is known as the " Mercersburg Theology " is
the product of the same principles. Everything which distinguishes
that theology from the theology of the Reformed Church, comes
from the introduction of these new German speculative principles.
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 533
No two of the writers above mentioned agree in all points. They
differ, however, only in the length to which they carry their com-
mon principles in modifying or overthrowing the faith of the Church.
Ebrard, one of the best, because one of the most moderate and least
infected of the class, says in the preface to his " Dogmatik," that he
goes hand in hand with the old Reformed theology in all points, and
that for that reason he is more true to the principles of his Church,
as a church of progress. He professes to have carried that theology
forward by a process of " organic development; " and this Professor
Harbaugh of Mercersburg, in his late inaugural address, claims to
have been the service, and still to be the office of the German Re-
formed Church in this country. It is true that the leading theolo-
gians of that Church, as was perhaps to be expected, have given
themselves up to the guidance of the German mind. All they have
done has been to incorporate the modern German philosophy with
theology. Their advances, therefore, have no more worth than be-
longs to any other form of human speculation. They do not pretend
to get their peculiar doctrines from the Bible ; they only labour to
make the Bible agree with their doctrines. But this is just as impos-
sible as that the Scriptures should teach the principles of modern
chemistry, astronomy, or geology. These philosophical principles
had no existence in the minds of men when the Bible was written,
and they have no authority now but what they get from their hu-
man authors. If they survive for a generation, it will be more than
similar speculations have in general been able to accomplish.^ It
is, however, lamentable to see how even good men allow themselves
to explain away the most catholic, and plainly revealed doctrines
of the Bible, in obedience to the dictates of the modern transcen-
dental philosophy. What however we have here immediately in
view is, the objections which this class of writers make to the
Church form of the doctrine of satisfaction, in obedience to the
assumed moral axiom above mentioned, namely, that the innocent
cannot by God be regarded and treated as guilty, or the guilty
regarded and treated as righteous. It is indeed true that God can-
not but regard every person as he really is. His judgments are
according to truth. But this is not inconsistent with his regarding
Christ, although personally innocent, as having voluntarily assumed
our place and undertaken to satisfy the demands of justice in our
place ; nor with his regarding the believer, although personally
1 Indeed, already the philosophy of Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher seems to be
for the rising men of Germany as much a thing of the past, as that of the Hindus or the
Cabala. The German mind has swung round from making spirit everything, to making it
nothing.
534 PART III. Ch. VII. — satisfaction OF CHRIST.
undeserving, as righteous, in the sense of being free from just ex-
posure to condemnation, on the ground of the vicarious satisfaction
of Christ. This is precisely what the Scriptures affirm to be true,
and that which believers in all ages have made the ground of their
hope toward God. This is almost the identical proposition affirmed
bv the Apostle, when he declares that on the ground of the propi-
tiation of Christ, God " can justify the ungodly," *• e., declare the
unrighteous to be righteous ; unrighteous personally, but righteous
in that the demands of justice in regard to him are satisfied. This
also is precisely what the writers referred to (not Ebrard who does
not go so far as those with whom he is classed) deny. If God, say
they, regards Christ as sinful, He must be really sinful ; if He pro-
nounces the believer righteous, he must be truly, personally, and
subjectively righteous. As most of these writers admit the sinless-
ness of Christ, and yet maintain that only sinners can be treated as
sinners, and only the personally righteous treated as righteous; and
as they hold that imputation implies the real possession of the
quality, act, or relation which is imputed, they are forced to teach
that Christ in assuming our nature as guilty and fallen, ipso facto,
assumed all the responsibilities of men, and was bound to answer
to the justice of God for all the sins which humanity had com-
mitted. The doctrine of one class of these writers is, that the
Logos in assuming our nature did not become an individual, but
the universal man ; He did not take to Himself " a true body and
a reasonable soul," but the whole of humanity, or humanity as an
organic whole or law of life ; the individual dying for the sins of
other individuals, does not satisfy justice. When He was nailed
to the cross, not an individual merely, but humanity itself, was
crucified ; and, therefore, his sufferings were the sufferings not of
an individual man, but of that which underlies all liuman individ-
ualities, and consequently avails for all in whom humanity is indi-
vidualized. As Christ becomes personally responsible for the guilt
which attaches to the humanity which He assumed, so we become
personally righteous and entitled, on the ground of what we are
or become, to eternal life, because, by our union with Him, we
partake of his humanity as well as of his divinity. His thean-
thropic nature is conveyed to us with all its merits, excellence, and
glories, as the nature of Adam with its guilt, pollution, and weak-
nesses, has been transmitted to his posterity. It is in favour of this
theory that the church doctrine of the substitution of Christ, the
innocent for the guilty ; of his bearing the guilt not of his own
nature, but of sinners ; of his suffering the penalty of the law in
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 535
the place of those by whom it had been incurred, one individual of
infinite dignity dying in the stead of the multitude of his people
(the shepherd for his sheep), is discarded and trodden under foot.
In reference to this theory, it is sufficient here to remark, —
1. That it is a mere speculative, or philosophical, anthropological
theory. It has no more authority than the thousands of specula-
tions vi^hich the teeming mind of man has produced. Schleier-
macher says that man is the form in which the universal spirit
comes to consciousness and individuality on this earth. These
writers say that man is the form in which generic humanity is in-
dividualized. Every philosophy has its own anthropology. It is
evidently most unreasonable and presumptuous to found the expla-
nation of a great Scriptural doctrine, which the people are bound to
understand and receive, and on which they are required to rest
their hope of salvation, upon a theory as to the nature of man,
which has no divine authority, and which not one man in a thou-
sand, perhaps not one in hundreds of thousands, believes or ever
has believed. The self-confidence and self-exaltation which such
a course implies, can hardly be the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
2. The theory itself is unintelligible. The phrases " universal
man," and " the whole of humanity," as here used, have no mean-
ing. To say that " humanity itself was nailed to the cross," con-
veys no rational idea. By a universal man might be meant a uni-
versal genius, or a man who represents all mankind as Adam did.
But this is expressly repudiated. By " a universal man," as dis-
tinguished from an individual man, is intended a man who includes
the whole of humanity in himself. Though this might be said of
Adam when he stood absolutely alone, before the creation of Eve,
yet it cannot be said of any one of a multitude of men. A univer-
sal man would be a man who included in himself all human per-
sons ; an idea as monstrous as the modern doctrine of " the all-
personality of God."
In the language of the Church, to assume a nature is to assume
a substance with its essential attributes and properties. Through
all ages in the Church the words ^uo-is, ovaia, substantia, and natura,
have, in relation to this subject, been used interchangeably. When
it is said that the Logos assumed our nature, it is meant that He took
into personal union with Himself a substance or essence having the
same essential properties which constitute us men. But He did not
assume the whole of that substance or essence. He assumed the
whole of humanity in the sense of assuming all the attributes of
humanity. He took upon Him all that was necessary to constitute
536 PART m. Ch. vn. — satisfaction of christ.
Him " very man " as He was from eternity " very God." This,
however, is not what these writers mean. They say He took upon
Him the whole of humanity so as to be, not an individual, but the
universal man. This is what some of the first of German minds
have pronounced to be Lhisinn, i. e., meaningless. Even if the
idea of substance, although recognized by the Bible, the Church,
and mankind, be discarded, and humanity, or human nature, be
defined as a life, or organic force, or aggregate of certain forces,
the case is not altered. A universal man would still be a man who
had in himself to the exclusion of all others, the totality of that life
or of those forces. There is no conceivable sense in which Christ
had in Himself the whole of humanity, when millions of other men
existed around Him. This whole theory, therefore, which is set
up as antagonistic to the Church doctrine of satisfaction, rests on
an unintelligible, or meaningless proposition. It is no new thing in
the history of the human mind that even great men should deceive
themselves with words, and take mystic phrases, or vague imagin-
ings for definite ideas.
3. There is a moral or ethical impossibility, as well as a meta-
physical one, involved in this theory. The doctrine is, that in
assuminor human nature Christ assumed the guilt attaching to the
sins humanity had committed. He became responsible for those
sins ; and was bound to bear the penalty they had incurred. Nev-
ertheless human nature as it existed in his person was guiltless and
absolutely pure. This, to our apprehensions, is an impossibility.
Guilt and sin can be predicated only of a person. This if not a
self-evident, is, at least, a universally admitted truth. Only a person
is a rational agent. It is only to persons that responsibility, guilt,
or moral character can attach. Human nature apart from human
persons cannot act, and therefore cannot contract guilt, or be re-
sponsible. Christ assumed a rational soul which had never existed
as a person, and coiild not be responsible on the ground of its na-
ture for the sins of other men. Unless guilt and sin be essential
attributes or properties of human nature, Christ did not assume
guilt by assuming that nature. If guilt and sin cannot be predicated
of Christ's person, they cannot by possibility be predicated of his
human nature. The whole theory, therefore, which denies that
Christ as a divine person clothed in a nature like our own, assumed
the guilt of our sins by imputation of what did not belong to Him,
and sustained the penalty which we had incurred, and makes that
denial on the ground that the innocent cannot bear the sins of the
guilty ; tliat God could not regard Him as sin, unless He was in
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 537
Himself sin, is founded on the moral impossibility that a nature,
as distinguished from a person, can sin or be guilty.
When it is said that we derive a sinful nature from Adam, and
that guilt as well as pollution attaches to the nature of fallen men,
the doctrine is, that we, and all who derive that nature from Adam,
are personally sinful and guilty. We are born, as the Apostle
says, the children of wrath. It is not an impersonal nature which
is guilty, for this would be a contradiction, but persons whose im-
manent, subjective state is opposed to the character and law of
God. All this, however, is denied concerning Christ. These
theologians admit that, as a person. He was without sin. But if
without sin. He was without guilt. It was according to the Scrip-
tures by the imputation to Him of sins not his own, that He bore
our guilt, or assumed the responsibility of satisfying justice on our
account. It is only by admitting that by being born of a woman,
or becoming flesh, Christ placed Himself in the category of sinful
men, and became personally a sinner, and guilty in the sight of
God, as all other men are, that it can be maintained that the as-
sumption of our nature in itself involved the assumption of guilt,
or that He thereby became responsible for all the sins which men
possessing that nature had committed.
4. It is another fatal objection to this scheme that it subverts the
whole gospel plan of salvation. Instead of directing the soul to
Christ, to his righteousness, and to his intercession ; that is, to
what is objective and out of itself, as the ground of its hope toward
God, it turns the attention of the sinner in upon himself. The only
righteousness he has on which to trust is within. He has a new
nature, and because of that nature is and deserves to be, recon-
ciled unto God and entitled to eternal life. It places Christ just
as far from us as Adam is. As Adam is the source of a nature
for which we are condemned, so Christ is the source of a nature
for which we are justified and saved. The system, therefore,
calls upon us to exchange a hope founded upon what Christ is
and has done in our behalf, a hope which rests upon an infinitely
meritorious righteousness out of ourselves, for a hope founded on
the glimmer of divine life which we find within ourselves. We
may call this new nature by what high-sounding names we please.
We may call it theanthropic, divine-human, or divine, it makes no
difference. Whatever it is called, it is something so weak and so
imperfect tliat it cannot satisfy ourselves, mvich less the infinitely
holy and just God. To call on men to trust for their acceptance
before God on the ground of what they are made by this inward
638 PART in. Ch. VII. — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
change, is to call upon them to build their eternal hopes upon a
foundation which cannot sustain a straw. That this is the true
view of the plan of salvation as proposed by these theologians,
notwithstanding the lofty terms in which they speak of Christ as
our Saviour, is plain from the parallel which they constantly refer
to between our relation to Christ and our relation to Adam. This
is an analogy which the Apostle insists upon, and which as pre-
sented by him is full of instruction and hope. Adam was the head
and representative of his race. We stood our probation in him.
His sin was putatively the sin of his posterity. It was the judicial
ground of their condemnation. The penalty of that transgression
was death, the loss of the life of God, as well as of his fellowship
and favour. All mankind, therefore, represented by Adam in the
first covenant came into the world in a state of condemnation and
of spiritual death. He was a type of Christ, because Christ is the
head and representative of his people. He fulfilled all righteousness
in their behalf and in their stead. As Adam's disobedience was
the ground of the condemnation of all who were in him, so Christ's
obedience is the ground of the justification of all who are in Him ;
and as spiritual death was the penal, and therefore certain conse-
quence of our condemnation for the sin of Adam, so spiritual and
eternal life is the covenanted, and therefore the certain and insep-
arable consequence of our justification for the righteousness of
Christ. But according to the modern speculative (or as it is called
by Dorner,^ " the regenerated ") theology, the parallel between
Christ and Adam is very different. We are not condemned for
Adam's sin, as his sin, but only for that sin as it was ours, commit-
ted by us as partakers of the numerically same nature that sinned
in him, and for the consequent corruption of our nature. The
whole ground of our condemnation is subjective or inward. We
are condemned for what we are. In like manner we are justified
for what we become through Christ. He assumed numerically the
same nature that had sinned. He sanctified it, elevated it, and
raised it to the power of a divine life by its union with his divine
person, and He communicates this new, theanthropic nature to his
people, and on the ground of what they thus become they are
reconciled and saved. It is a favourite and frequently occurring
statement with these writers that Christ redeems us, not by what
He does, but by what He is. His assumption of our nature was
its redemption. Extreme spiritualism always ends in materialism.
1 See his Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, p. 769, and onward. He dates this re-
generation from Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, especially, of course, the last.
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 539
This whole theory has a materiahstic aspect. Humanity as derived
from Adam is conceived of as a polluted stream, into which a heal-
ing purifying element was introduced by Christ. From Him on-
ward, it flows as a life-giving stream. What then becomes of those
who lived before Christ ? This is a question which these theolo-
gians are slow to answer. They agree, however, in saying that
the condition of the patriarchs was deplorable ; that their relation
to Christ was essentially different from ours. There was no the-
anthropic life for them. That began with the incarnation, and the
stream cannot flow backwards.
No one can read the theological works of the speculative school,
without being satisfied that their. design is not to set forth what the
Scriptures teach. To this little or no attention is paid. Their
object is to give a scientific interpretation of certain facts of Scrip-
ture (such as sin and redemption), in accordance with the princi-
ples of the current philosophy. These writers are as much out of
the reach, and out of contact with the sympathies and religious life
of the people, as men in a balloon are out of relation to those they
leave behind. To the aeronauts indeed those on the earth appear
very diminutive and grovelling ; but they are none the less in their
proper sphere and upon solid ground. All that the excursionists
can hope for is a safe return to terra jirma. And that is seldom
accomplished without risk or loss.
Popular Objections.
The more popular objections to the doctrine of vicarious satis-
faction have already been considered in the progress of the discus-
sion. A certain amount of repetition may be pardoned for the sake
of a brief and distinct statement of the several points. These
objections were all urged by Socinus and his associates at the time
of the Reformation. They are principally the following : —
There is no Vindicatory Justice in God.
1. There is no such attribute in God as vindicatory justice, and
therefore there can be no satisfaction to justice required or rendered.
This would be a fatal objection if the assumption which it involves
were correct. But if it is intuitively true, that sin ought to be
punished, then it is no less true that God will, and from the consti-
tution of his nature must do, what ought to be done. All men,
in despite of the sophistry of the understanding, and in despite of
their moral degradation, know that it is the righteous judgment of
God, that those who sin are worthy of death. They, therefore,
{
540 PART III. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction of CHRIST.
know that without a satisfaction to justice, sin cannot be pardoned.
If there be no sacrifice for sin, there is only a fearful looking for of
judgment. This conviction lies undisturbed at the bottom of every
human breast, and never fails, sooner or later, to reveal itself with
irrepressible force on the reason and the conscience.
There can he no Antagonism in G-od.
2. To the same effect it is objected that there can be no antag-
onism in God. There cannot be one impulse to punish and another
impulse not to punish. All God's acts or manifestations of Him-
self toward his creatures, must be referred to one principle, and
that principle is love. And, therefore, his plan of saving sinners
can only be regarded as an exhibition of love, not of justice in any
form. All that He can, as a God of love, require, is the return of
his creatures to Himself, which is a return to holiness and happi-
ness. It is true God is love. But it is no less true that love in
God is not a weakness, impelling Him to do what ought not to be
done. If sin ought to be punished, as conscience and the word of
God declare, then there is nothing in God which impels Him to
leave it unpunished. His whole nature is indeed harmonious, but
it has the harmony of moral excellence, leading with absolute cer-
tainty to the judge of all the earth doing right ; punishing or par-
doning, just as moral excellence demands. The love of God has
not prevented the final perdition of apostate angels; and it could
not require the restoration of fallen men without an adequate
atonement. The infinite, discriminating love of God to our race,
is manifested in his givinor his own Son to bear our sins and to re-
deem us from the curse of the law by sustaining the penalty in his
own person. " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that
He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (iAao-/ios, pro-
pitiatio, expiatio. No man can get the saving import out of that
word) for our sins." (1 John iv. 10.)
The Transfer of Gruilt or Righteousness Impossible.
3. It is objected that the transfer of guilt and righteousness
involved in the Church doctrine of satisfaction is impossible.
The transfer of guilt or righteousness, as states of consciousness or
forms of moral character, is indeed impossible. But the transfer
of guilt as responsibility to justice, and of righteousness as that
which satisfies justice, is no more impossible than that one man
should pay the debt of another. All that the Bible teaches on this
subject is that Christ paid as a substitute, our debt to the justice
I
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 541
of God. The handwriting (xftpoypa</>ov, the bond, Schuldbrief)
Christ has cancelled, by nailing it to his cross. His complete sat-
isfaction to the law, freed us as completely as the debtor is freed
when his bond is legally cancelled.
Expiation a Heathenish Idea.
4. The idea of expiation, the innocent suffering for the guilty,
and God being thereby propitiated, is declared to be heathenish
and revolting. No man has the right to make his taste or feelings
the test of truth. That a doctrine is disagreeable, is no sufficient
evidence of its untruth. There are a great many terribly un-
pleasant truths, to which we sinners have to submit. Besides, the
idea of expiation is not revolting to the vast majority of minds, as
is proved by its being incorporated in all religions of men, whether
pagan, Jewish, or Christian. So far from being revolting, it is
cherished and delighted in as the only hope of the guilty. So
far from the innocent suffering for the guilty being a revolting
spectacle, it is one of the sublimest exhibitions of self-sacrificing
love. All heaven stands uncovered before the cross on which the
Son of God, holy and harmless, bore the sins of men. And God
forbid that redeemed sinners should regard the cross as an offence.
God is not won to love by the death of his Son, but that death
renders it consistent with moral excellence that his infinite love for
sinful men should have unrestricted sway.
Satisfaction to Justice unnecessary.
5. It is objected that the doctrine of satisfaction to justice by
means of vicarious punishment is unnecessary. All that is needed
for the restoration of harmony in the universe can be effected by
the power of love. The two great ends to be accomplished are a
due impression on rational minds of the evil of sin, and the refor-
mation of sinners. Both these objects, it is contended, are secured
without expiation or any penal suffering. According to some, the
work of Christ operates assthetically to accomplish the ends de-
sired ; according to others, it operates morally through the exhibi-
tion of love or by example, or by the confirmation of truth ; and ac-
cording to others, the operation is supernatural or mystical. But
in any case his work was no satisfaction to justice or expiation for
sin. It is enough to say in answer to all this, —
1. That such is not the doctrine of the Bible. The Scriptures
teach that something more was necessary for the salvation of men
than moral influences and impressions, or the revelation and con-
542 PART III. Cii. VII. — SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.
firmation of truth, something very different from mystical influ-
ence on the nature of man. What was necessary was precisely
what was done. The Son of God assumed our nature, took the
place of sinners, hore the curse of the law in their stead, and there-
by rendered it possible that God should be just and yet the justi-
fier of the ungodly. If such be the Scripture doctrine, all these
schemes of redemption may be dismissed without consideration.
2. These schemes are not only unscriptural, but they are inoper-
ative. They do not meet the necessities of tlie case, as those
necessities reveal themselves in the consciousness of men. They
make no provision for the removal of guilt. But the sense of guilt
is universal and ineradicable. It is not irrational. It is not founded
on ignorance or misconception of our relation to God. The more
the soul is enlightened, the more deep and painful is its sense of
guilt. There are some philosophers who would persuade us that
there is no such thing as sin ; that the sense of moral pollution of
which men complain, and under which the holiest men groan as un-
der a body of death, is all a delusion, a state of mind produced by
erroneous views of God and of his relation to his creatures. There
are others, theologians as well as philosophers, who while admit-
ting the reality of moral evil, and recognizing the validity of the
testimony of consciousness as to our moral pollution, endeavour to
persuade us that there is no such thing as guilt. Responsibility to
justice, the desert of punishment, the moral necessity for the pun-
ishment of sin, they deny. The one class is just as obviousl}'-
wrong as the other. Consciousness testifies just as clearly and
just as universally to the guilt, as to the pollution. It craves as
importunately deliverance from the one as from the other. A plan
of salvation, therefore, which makes no provision for the removal
of guilt, or satisfaction of justice, which admits no such thing as
the vicarious punishment of sin, is as little suited to our necessities
as though it made no provision for the reformation and sanctifica-
tion of men.
3. A third remark on these humanly devised schemes of re-
demption is, that while they leave out the essential idea of expia-
tion, or satisfaction to justice by vicarious punishment, without
which salvation is impossible, and reconciliation with a just God
inconceivable, they contain no element of influence or power which
does not belong in a higher degree to the Scriptural and Church
doctrine. Whatever there is of power in a perfectly sinless life,
of a life of self-sacrifice and devotion to the service of God and the
good of man, is to be found in the Church doctrine. Whatever
§ 7.] OBJECTIONS. 543
there is of power in the prolonged exhibition of a love which passes
knowledge, is to be found there. Whatever there is of power in
the truths which Christ taught, and which He sealed with his
blood, truths either before entirely unknovvn, or only imperfectly
apprehended, belongs of course to the doctrine which the Church
universal has ever held. And whatever there is of reality in the
doctrine of our mystical union, and of our participation of the na-
ture of Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, belongs
to the Scriptural doctrine, without the blurring and enfeebling
effects of modern speculation. While, therefore, we should lose
everything in renouncing the doctrine of expiation through the
sacrificial death of Christ, we should gain nothing, by adopting
these modern theories.
" If a man," says Delitzsch, " keeps in view our desert of pun-
ishment, and allows the three saving doctrines of Scripture to stand
in their integrity, namely, (1.) That God made Him who knew no
sin to be sin for us, i. <?., imputed our sins to Him. (2.) That
Christ, although free from guilt, laden with our guilt, was made a
curse for us, i. e., suffered the wrath of God due to us ; or, as the
Scripture also says, that God executed on his Son judgment against
sin, He having taken upon Him flesh and blood and offered Him-
self as a sacrifice for us for the expiation of sin. (3.) That in like
manner his righteousness is imputed to believers, so that we may
stand before God, as He had submitted to the imputation of our
sins in order to their expiation ; if these premises remain unoblit-
erated, then it is as clear as the sun that Christ suffered and died
as our substitute, in order that we need not suffer what we de-
served, and in order that we instead of dying should be partakers
of the life secured by his vicarious death." ^
1 Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebrder, p. 728. " Behiilt man die Verdammnisswiirdig-
keit unserer Schuld recht im Auge und Ifisst man ohne Deuteln die drei grossen von der
Schrift bezeugten Heilswahrheiten stehen: 1. dass Gott den der von keiner Siinde wiisste
fur uns zur Siinde geniacht d. i. ihm unsere Siinden imputirt hat; 2. dass Cliristus der
Schuldlose, aber mit unserer Schuld Reladene tlir uns ein Fliich geworden d. i. den Blitz
des Zorns, der uns treffen sollte, ftir uns eriitten, oder, w;e die Schrift auch sagt, dass Gott
an seinem Sohne, der unser Fleisch und Blut angenommen und sich uns zum Siindopfer, zur
Siindensiihiie begeben, das Gericht iiber die Siinde vollzogen; 3. dass uns nun im Glauben
seine Gerechtigkeit ebenso zuijerechnet wird, um vor Gott bestehen zu konnen, wie er sich
hat unsere Siinden zurechiien lassen, um sie zu biis«en — : so ist es auch, so lauge diese
Vordersatze ungeschmjiiert bieiben, sonnenklar, das er stellverti-ele.nd fur uns gelitten und
gestorben, daniit wir nicht ieiden miissten, was wir verwirkt, und damit wir statt zu sterben
in seinem durch stellvertretenden Tod hindurch gewonnen Leben das Leben batten."
CHAPTER VIII.
FOR WHOM DID CHRIST DIE?
§ 1. State of the Question.
This is a question between Augustinians and Anti-Augustinians.
The former believing that God from all eternity having elected
some to everlasting life, had a special reference to their salvation
in the mission and work of his Son. The latter, denying that there
has been any such election of a part of the human family to sal-
vation, maintain that the mission and work of Christ had an equal
reference to all mankind.
The question, therefore, does not, in the first place, concern the
nature of Christ's work. It is true, if it be denied that his work
was a satisfaction for sin, and affirmed that it was merely didactic ;
that his life, sufferings, and death were designed to reveal and
confirm truth ; then it would follow of course that it had no refer-
ence to one class of men more than to another, or to men more
than to angels. Truth is designed for the illumination of all the
minds to which it is presented. But admitting the work of Christ
to have been a true satisfaction for sin, its design may still be an
open question. Accordingly, Lutherans and Reformed, although
they agree entirely as to the nature of the atonement, diiFer as to
its design. The former maintain that it had an equal reference to
all mankind, the latter that it had special reference to the elect.
In the second place, the question does not concern the value of
Christ's satisfaction. That Augustinians admit to be infinite. Its
value depends on the dignity of the sacrifice ; and as no limit can
be placed to the dignity of the Eternal Son of God who offered Him-
self for our sins, so no limit can be assigned to the meritorious value
of his work. It is a gross misrepresentation of the Augustinian
doctrine to say that it teaches that Christ suffered so much for so
many ; that He would have suffered more had more been included
in the purpose of salvation. This is not the doctrine of any Church
on earth, and never has been. What was sufficient for one was
sufficient for all. Nothino; less than the light and heat of the sun
is sufficient for any one plant or animal. But what is absolutely
§ 1.] STATE OF THE QUESTION. 545
necessary for each is abundantly sufficient for the infinite number
and variety of plants and animals which fill the earth. All that
Christ did and suffered would have been necessary had only one
human soul been the object of redemption ; and nothing different
and nothing more would have been required had every child of
Adam been saved through his blood.
In the third place, the question does not concern the suitableness
of the atonement. What was suitable for one was suitable for all.
The righteousness of Christ, the merit of his obedience and death,
is needed for justification by each individual of our race, and there-
fore is needed by all. It is no more appropriate to one man than
to another. Christ fulfilled the conditions of the covenant under
which all men were placed. He rendered the obedience required
of all, and suffered the penalty which all had incurred ; and there-
fore his work is equally suited to all.
In the fourth place, the question does not concern the actual
application of the redemption purchased by Christ. The parties to
this controversy are agreed that some only, and not all of mankind
are to be actually saved.
The whole question, therefore, concerns simply the purpose of
God in the mission of his Son. What was the design of Christ's
coming into the world, and doing and suffering all He actually did
and suffered? Was it merely to make the salvation of all men
possible ; to remove the obstacles which stood in the way of the
offer of pardon and acceptance to sinners ? or, Was it specially to
render certain the salvation of his own people, i. e., of those given
to Him by the Father ? The latter question is affirmed by Augus-
tinians, and denied by their opponents. It is obvious that if there
be no election of some to everlasting life, the atonement can have
no special reference to the elect. It must have equal reference to
all mankind. But it does not follow from the assertion of its having
a special reference to the elect that it had no reference to the non-
elect. Augustinians readily admit that the death of Christ had a
relation to man, to the whole human family, which it had not to
the fallen angels. It is the ground on which salvation is offered to
every creature under heaven who hears the gospel ; but it gives no
authority for a like offer to apostate angels. It moreover secures
to the whole race at large, and to all classes of men, innumerable
blessings, both providential and religious. It was, of course, de-
signed to produce these effects ; and, therefore. He died to secure
them. In view of the effects which the death of Christ produces
on the relation of all mankind to God, it has in all ages been cus-
VOL. II. 35
546 PART III. Cu. VIU. — FOR WHOM DID CHRIST DIE?
toinary with Augustinians to say that Christ died " sufficienter pro
omnibus, efficaciter tantutn pro electls ; " sufficiently for all, effica-
ciously only for the elect. There is a sense, therefore, in which
He died for all, and there is a sense in which He died for the elect
alone. The simple question is, Had the death of Christ a reference
to the elect which it had not to other men ? Did He come into
the world to secure the salvation of those given to Him by the
Father, so that the other effects of his work are merely incidental
to what was done for the attainment of that object ?
§ 2. Proof of the Augustinian Doctrine.
That these questions must be answered in the affirmative, is
evident, —
1. From the nature of the covenant of redemption. It is admit-
ted that there was a covenant between the Father and the Son in
relation to the salvation of men. It is admitted that Christ came
into the world in execution of that covenant. The nature of the
covenant, therefore, determines the object of his death. According
to one view, man having by his fall lost the ability of fulfilling the
conditions of the covenant of life, God, for Christ's sake, enters into
a new covenant, offering men salvation upon other and easier
terms ; namely, as some say, faith and repentance, and others
evangelical obedience. If such be the nature of tlie plan of salva-
tion, then it is obvious that the work of Christ has equal reference
to all mankind. According to another view, the work of Christ
was designed to secure the pardon of original sin and the gift of
the Holy Spirit for all men, Jews or Gentiles, and those are saved
who duly improve the grace they severally receive. The former
is the doctrine of the ancient Semi-Pelagians and modern Remon-
strants ; the latter of the Wesleyan Arminians. The Lutherans
hold that God sent his Son to make a full and real legal satisfaction
for the sins of all mankind ; and that on the ground of this perfect
satisfaction the offer of salvation is made to all who hear the gos-
pel ; that grace is given (in the word and sacraments) which, if
unresisted, is sufficient to secure their salvation. The French
theologians at Saumur, in the 17th century, taught also that Christ
came into the world to do whatever was necessary for the salvation
of men. But God, foreseeing that, if left to themselves, men would
universally reject the offers of mercy, elected some to be the sub-
jects of his saving grace by which they are brought to faith and
repentance. According to this view of the plan of salvation, elec-
tion is subordinate to redemption. God first redeems all and then
I
§2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 547
elects some. This is the view extensively adopted in this country.
According to Augustinians, men, by their fall, having sunk into
a state of sin and misery, might justly have been left, as were
the fallen angels, to perish in their sins. But God, in his infinite
mercy, having determined to save a multitude whom no man could
number, gave them to his Son as his inheritance, provided He
would assume their nature and fulfil all righteousness in their stead.
In the accomplishment of this plan Ciirist did come into the world,
and did obey and suffer in the place of those thus given to Him, and
for their salvation. This was the definite object of his mission,
and therefore his death had a reference to them which it could not
possibly have to those whom God determined to leave to the just
recompense of their sins. Now this plan only supposes that God.
determined from eternity to do what in time He has actually
accomplished. If it were just that all men should pei'ish on account
of their sin it was just to leave a portion of the race thus to perish,
while the salvation of the other portion is a matter of unmerited
favour. It can hardly be denied that God did thus enter into
covenant with his Son. That is, that He did promise Him the
salvation of his people as the reward of his incarnation and suffer-
ings ; that Christ did come into the world and suffer and die on
that condition, and, having performed the condition, is entitled to
the promised reward. These are, facts so clearly and so repeatedly
stated in the Scriptures as not to admit of their being called into
question. But if such is the plan of God respecting the salvation
of men then it of necessity follows that election precedes redemp-
tion ; that God had determined whom He would save before He
sent his Son to save them. Therefore our Lord said that those
given to Him by his Father should certainly come to Him, and
that He would raise them up at the last day. These Scriptural
facts cannot be admitted without its being also admitted that the
death of Christ had a reference to his people, whose salvation it
rendered certain, which it had not to others whom, for infinitely
wise reasons, God determined to leave to themselves. It follows,
therefore, from the nature of the covenant of redemption, as pre-
sented in the Bible, that Christ did not die equally for all mankind,
but that He gave Himself for his people and for their redemption.
Argument from the Doctrine of Election.
2. This follows also almost necessarily from the doctrine of elec-
tion. Indeed it never was denied that Christ died specially for the
elect until the doctrine of election itself was rejected. Augustine,
548 PART III. Ch. Vni. — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
the follower and expounder of St. Paul, taught that God out of his
•mere good pleasure had elected some to everlasting life, and held
that Christ came into the world to suffer and die for their salvation.
He purchased them with his own precious blood. The Semi-
Pelagians, in denying the doctrine of election, of course denied
that Christ's death had more reference to one class of men than to
another. Tiie Latin Church, so long as it held to the Augustinian
doctrine of election, held also to Augustine's doctrine concerning
the design and objects of Christ's death. All through the Middle
Aires this was one of the distinctive doctrines of those wlio resisted
the progress of the Semi-Pelagian party in the Western Chui'ch.
At the time of the Reformation the Lutherans, so long as they
held to the one doctrine held also to the otiier. The Reformed,
in holding fast the doctrine of election, remained faithful to their
denial of the doctrine that the work of Christ had equal reference
to all mankind. It was not until the Remonstrants in Holland,
under the teaching of Arminius, rejected the Church doctrine of
original sin, of the inability of fallen man to anything spiritually
good, the sovereignty of God in election, and the perseverance of
the saints, that the doctrine that the atonement had a special refer-
ence to the people of God was rejected. It is, therefore, a matter
of history that the doctrine of election and the Augustinian doctrine
as to the design of the work of Christ have been inseparably united.
As this connection is historical so also is it logical. The one doc-
trine necessarily involves the other. If God from eternity deter-
mined to save one portion of the human race and not another, it
seems to be a contradiction to say that tiie plan of salvation had
equal reference to both portions ; that the Fatiier sent his Son to
die for those whom He had predetermined not to save, as truly as,
and in the same sense that He gave Him up for those whom He
had chosen to make the heirs of salvation.
Express Declarations of Scripture,
3. We accordingly find numerous passages in which the design
of Christ's death is declared to be, to save his people from their
sins. He did not come merely to render their salvation possible,
but actually to deliver them from the curse of the law, and from
the power of sin. This is included in all the Scriptural representa-
tions of the nature and design of his work. No man pays a ransom
without the certainty of the deliverance of those for whom it is
paid. It is not a ransom unless it actually redeems. And an
offering is no sacrifice unless it actually expiates and propitiates.
§ 2.J PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 549
The effect of a ransom and sacrifice may indeed be conditional, but
the occurrence of the condition will be rendered certain before the
costly sacrifice is offered.
There are also very numerous passages in which it is expressly
declared that Christ gave Himself for his Ciiurch (Ephesians v.
25) ; that He laid down his life for his sheep (John x. 15) ; that He
laid down his life for his friends (John xv. 13) ; that He died that He
might gather together in one the cliildren of God that are scattei*ed
abroad (John xi. 52); that it was the Church which He purchased
with his blood (Acts xx. 28). When mankind are divided into two
classes, the Church and the world, the friends and the enemies of
God, the sheep and the goats, whatever is affirmed distinctively of
the one class is impliedly denied of the other. When it is said
that Christ loved his Church and gave Himself for it, that He laid
down his life for his sheep, it is clear that something is said of the
Church and of the sheep, which is not true of those who belong to
neither. When it is said that a man labours and sacrifices health
and strength for his children, it is thereby denied that the motive
which controls him is mere philanthropy, or that the design he has
in view is the good of society. He may indeed be a philanthropist,
and he may recognize the fact that the well-being of his children
will promote the welfare of society, but this does not alter the
case. It still remains true that love for his children is the motive,
and their good his object. It is difficult, in the light of Ephesians
V. 25, where the deatii of Christ is attributed to his love of his
Church, and is said to have been designed for its sanctification and
salvation, to believe that He gave Himself as much for reprobates
as for those whom He intended to save. Every assertion, there-
fore that Christ died for a people, is a denial of the doctrine that
He died equally for all men.
Argument from the Special Love of Grod.
4. By the love of God is sometimes meant his goodness, of which
all sensitive creatures are the objects and of whose benefits they
are the recipients. Sometimes it means his special regard for tiie
children of men, not only as rational creatures, but also as the off-
spring of Him who is the Father of the spirits of all men. Some-
times it means that peculiar, mysterious, sovereign, immeasurable
love which passes knowledge, of which his own people, the Church
of the first-born whose names are written in heaven, are the ob-
jects. Of this love it is taught, (1.) Tiiat it is infinitely great.
(2.) That it is discriminating, fixed on some and not upon others
550 PART III. Ch. Vni. — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
of the children of men. It is compared to the love of a husband
for his wife ; which from its nature is exclusive. (3.) That it is
perfectly gratuitous and sovereign, i. e., not founded upon the
special attractiveness of its objects, but like parental affection, on
the mere fact that they are his children. (4.) That it is immuta-
ble. (5.) That it secures all saving blessings, and even all good ;
so that even afflictions are among its fruits intended for the greater
good of the sufferer. Now to this love, not to general goodness,
not to mere philanthropy, but to this peculiar and infinite love, the
gift of Christ is uniformly referred. Herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the pro-
pitiation for our sins. (1 John iv. 10.) Hereby perceive we the
love of God (or, hereby we know what love is), because He (Christ)
laid down his life for us. (1 John iii. 16.) God commendeth his
love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us. (Romans v. 8.) Greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends. (John xv. 13.) Nothing
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus. (Romans viii. 35-39.) He that spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things ? (Romans viii. 32.) The whole argument
of the Apostle in Romans v. 1-11, and especially throughout the
eighth chapter, is founded upon this infinite and immutable love of
God to his people. From this he argues their absolute security for
time and eternity. Because He thus loved them He gave his Son
for them ; and, having done this. He would certainly give them
everything necessary for their salvation. No enemy should ever
prevail against them ; nothing could ever separate them from his
love. This whole argument is utterly irreconcilable with the
hypothesis that Christ died equally fur all men. His death is
referred to the peculiar love of God to his people, and was the
pledge of all other saving gifts. This peculiar love of God is not
founded upon the fact that its objects are believers, for He loved
them as enemies, as ungodly, and gave his Son to secure their
being brought to faith, repentance, and complete restoration to the
divine image. It cannot, therefore, be explained away into mere
general benevolence or philanthropy. It is a love which secured
the communication of Himself to its objects, and rendered their
salvation certain ; and consequently could not be bestowed upon
all men, indiscriminately. Tiiis representation is so predominant
in the Scriptures, namely, that the peculiar love of God to his peo-
ple, to his Church, to the elect, is the source of the gift of Christ,
§ 2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. ' 551
of the mission of the Holy Spirit, and of all other saving blessings,
that it cannot be ignored in any view of the plan and purpose of
salvation. With this representation every other statement of the
Scriptures must be consistent ; and therefore the theory which
denies this great and precious truth, and which assumes that the
love which secured the gift of God's eternal Son, was mere benevo-
lence which had all men for its object, many of whom are allowed
to perish, must be unscriptural.
Argument from the Believer^ s Union with Christ.
5. Another argument is derived from the nature of the union
between Christ and his people. The Bible teaches, (1.) That a
certain portion of the human race were given to Christ. (2.) That
they were given to Him before the foundation of the world.
(3.) That all thus given to Him will certainly come to Him and
be saved. (4.) That this union, so far as it was from eternity, is
not a union of nature, nor by faith, nor by the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit. It was a federal union. (5.) That Christ, therefore,
was a federal head and representative. As such He came into the
world, and all He did and suffered was as a representative, as a
substitute, one acting in the place and for the benefit of others.
But He was the representative of those given to Him, i. g., of those
who were in Him. For it was this gift and the union consequent
upon it, that gave Him his representative character, or constituted
Him a federal head. He was therefore the federal head, not of the
human race, but of those given to Him by the Father. And,
therefore, his work, so far as its main design is concerned, was for
them alone. Whatever reference it had to others was subordinate
and incidental. All this is illustrated and proved by the Apostle
in Romans v. 12-21, in the parallel which he draws between Adam
and Clirist. All mankind were in Adam. He was the federal
head and representative of his race. All men sinned in him and
fell with him in his first transgression. The sentence of condemna-
tion for his one offence passed upon all men. In like manner Christ
was the representative of his people. He acted for them. What
He did and suffered in their place, or as their representative, they
in the eye of the law, did and suffered. By his obedience they
are justified. As all in Adam died, so all in Christ are made alive.
Such is the nature of the union in both cases, that the sin of the one
rendered certain and rendered just the death of all united to Adam,
and the righteousness of the other rendered certain and just the
salvation of all who are in Him. The sin of Adam did not make
552 PART m. Ch. VIII. — FOR WHOM DID CHRIST DIE ?
the condemnation of all men merely possible ; it was the ground of
their actual condemnation. So the righteousness of Christ did not
make the salvation of men merely possible, it secured the actual
salvation of those for whom He wrought. As it would be unrea-
sonable to say that Adam acted for those who were not in him ; so
it is unscriptural to say that Christ acted for those who were not
in Him. Nevertheless, the act of Adam as the head and repre-
sentative of his race, was fruitful of evil consequences, not to man
only, but to the earth and all that it contains ; and so the work of
Christ is fruitful of good consequences to others than those for
whom He acted. But this does not justify any one in saying that
Adam acted as much as the representative of the brute creation^
as of his posterity ; neither does it justify the assertion that Christ
died for all mankind in the same sense that He died for liis own
people. This is all so clearly revealed in Scripture that it extorts
the assent of those who are decidedly opposed to the Augustinian
system. One class of those opponents, of whom Whitby may be
taken as a representative, admit the truth of all that has been said
of the representative character of Adam and Christ. But they
maintain that as Adam represented the whole race, so also did
Christ ; and as in Adam all men die, so in Christ are all made
alive. But they say that this has nothing to do with spiritual death
in the one case, or with the salvation of the soul in the other.
The death which came on all men for the sin of Adam, was merely
the death of the body ; and the life which comes on all through
Christ, is the restoration ot the life of the body at the resurrection.
The Wesleyans take the same view of the representative cliarac-
ter of Christ and of Adam. Each stood for all mankind. Adam
brings upon all men the guilt of his first sin and corruption of na-
ture. Christ secures the removal of the guilt of original sin and
a seed of grace, or principle of spiritual life, for all men. So also
one class of Universalists hold that as all men are condemned for
the sin of Adam, so all are actually saved by the work of Christ.
Rationalists also are ready to admit that Paul does teach all that
Augustinians understand him to teach, but they say that this was
only his Jewish mode of presenting the matter. It is not absolute
truth, but a mere transient form suited to the age of the Apostles.
In all these cases, however, the main fact is conceded. Christ did
act as a representative ; and what He did secured with certainty
the benefits of his work for those for whom He acted. This being
conceded, it of course follows that He acted as the representative
and substitute of those only who are ultimately to be saved.
§2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 553
6. There is another argument on this subject generally pre-
sented, which ought not to be overlooked. The unity of the
priestly office rendered the functions of the priesthood inseparable.
The high-priest interceded for all those for whom he offered sacri-
fice. The one service did not extend beyond the other. He bore
upon his breast the names of the twelve tribes. He represented
them in drawing near to God. He offered sacrifices for their sins
on the great day of atonement, and for them he interceded, and
for no others. The sacrifice and the intercession went together.
What was true of the Aaron ic priests, is true of Christ. The for-
mer, we are told, were the types of the latter. Christ's functions
as priest are in like manner united. He intercedes for all for
whom He offered Himself as a sacrifice. He himself, however,
says expressly, " I pray not for the world, but for them which thou
hast given me." (John xvii. 9.) Him the Father heareth always,
and, therefore. He cannot be assumed to intercede for those who
do not actually receive the benefits of his redemption.
The Church Doctrine embraces all the Facts of the Case.
7. The final test of any theory is its agreeing or disagreeing
with the facts to be explained. The difficuhy with all tiie Anti-
Augustinian views as to the design of Christ's deatli, is that
while they are consistent with fnore or less of the Scriptural facts
connected with the subject, they are utterly irreconcilable with
others not less clearly revealed and equally important. They
are consistent, for example, with the fact that the work of Clu-ist
lays the foundation for the offer of the gospel to all men, with
the fact that men are justly condemned for tlie rejection of that
offer ; and witli the fact that the Scriptures frequently assert that
the work of Christ had reference to all men. All these facts
can be accounted for on the assumption, that the great design of
Christ's death was to make the salvation of all men possible, and
that it had equal reference to every member of our race. But
there are other facts which this theory leaves out of view, and
with which it cannot be reconciled. On the other hand it is
claimed that the Augustinian doctrine recognizes all the Scriptural
assertions connected with the subject, and reconciles them all. If
this be so, it must be the doctrine of the Bible. The facts which
are clearly revealed concerning the death or work of Christ are, —
(1.) That God from eternity gave a people to his Son.
(2.) That the peculiar and infinite love of God to his people is
declared to be the motive for the gift of his Son ; and their salva-
tion the desicrn of his mission.
554 PART III. Ch. Vm. — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
(3.) That it was as their representative, head, and substitute,
He came into the world, assumed our nature, fulfilled all righteous-
ness, and bore the curse of the law.
(4.) That the salvation of all given to Him by the Father, is
thus rendered absolutely certain.
That the Augustinian scheme agrees with these great Scriptural
facts, is readily admitted, but it is denied that it accounts for the
fact that on the ground of the work of Christ, salvation may be
offered to every human being ; and that all who hear and reject
the gospel, are justly condemned for their unbelief. That these
are Scriptural facts cannot be denied, and if the Augustinian doc-
trine does not provide for them, it must be false or defective.
There are different grounds on which it is assumed that the Au-
gustinian doctrine does not provide for the universal offer of the
gospel. One is, the false assumption that Augustinians teach that
the satisfaction of Christ was in all respects analogous to the pay-
ment of a debt, a satisfaction to commutative or commercial jus-
tice. Hence it is inferred that Christ suffered so much for so
many ; He paid so much for one soul, and so much for another, and
of course He would have been called upon to pay more if more
were to have been saved. If this be so, then it is clear that the
work of Christ can justify the offer of salvation to those only
whose debts He has actually cancelled. To this view of the case
it may be remarked, —
1. That this doctrine was never held by any historical church ;
and the ascription of it to Augustinians can only be accounted for
on the ground of ignorance.
2. It involves the greatest confusion of ideas. It confounds the
obligations which arise among men as owners of property, with the
obligations of rational creatures to an infinitely holy God. A
debtor is one owner, and a creditor is another. Commutative jus-
tice requires that they should settle their mutual claims equitably.
But God is not one owner and the sinner another. Tliey do not
stand in relation to each other as two proprietors. The obligation
which binds a debtor to pay a creditor, and the principle which
impels a just God to punish sin, are entirely distinct. God is tiie
absolute owner of all things. We own nothing. We cannot sus-
tain to Him, in this respect, tlie relation of a debtor to his creditor.
The objection in question, therefore, is founded on an entire mistake
or misrepresentation of the attribute of justice, to which, according
to Augustinians, the satisfaction of Christ is rendered. Because the
sin of Adam was the ground of the condemnation of his race, does
I
§2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 555
any man infer that He sinned so much for one man and so much for
another? Why then sliould it be said that because the righteous-
ness of Christ is tlie judicial ground of our salvation, that He did
and suffered so much for one man and so much for another ?
3. As tliis objection is directed against a theory which no Church
has ever adopted, and as it attributes to God a form of justice
which cannot possibly belong to Him, so it is contrary to those
Scriptural representations on which the Augustinian doctrine is
founded. The Scriptures teach that Christ saves us as a priest, by
offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. But a sacrifice was
not a payment of a debt, the payment of so much for so much.
A single victim was sometimes a sacrifice for one individual ; some-
times for the whole people. On the great day of atonement the
scape-goat bore the sins of the people, whether they were more or
less numerous. It had no reference at all to the number of persons
for whom atonement was to be made. So Christ bore the sins of
his people ; whether they were to be a few hundreds, or countless
millions, or the whole human family, makes no difference as to the
nature of his work, or as to the value of his satisfaction. What
was absolutely necessary for one, was abundantly sufficient for all.
The objection, however, is at times presented in a somewhat
different form. Admitting the satisfaction of Christ to be in itself
of infinite value, how can it avail for the non-elect if it was not de-
signed for them ? It does not avail for the fallen angels, because it
was not intended for them ; how then can it avail for the non-elect,
if not designed for them ? How can a ransom, whatever its in-
trinsic value, benefit those for whom it was not paid? In this form
the objection is far more specious. It is, however, fallacious. It-
overlooks the peculiar nature of the case. It ignores the fact that
all mankind were placed under the same constitution or covenant.
What was demanded for the salvation of one was demanded for the
salvatiofi of all. Every man is required to satisfy the demands of
the law. No man is required to do either more or less. If those
demands ai-e satisfied by a representative or substitute, his work is
equally available for all. The secret purpose of God in providing
such a substitute for man, has nothing to do with the nature of his
work, or with its appropriateness. The righteousness of Christ
being of infinite value or merit, and being in its nature precisely
what all men need, may be offered to all men. It is thus offered
to the elect and to the non-elect ; and it is offered to both classes
conditionally. That condition is a cordial acceptance of it as the
only ground of justification. If any of the elect (being adults}
556 PART m. Ch. VIIL — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
fail thus to accept of it, they perish. If any of the non-elect
should believe, they would be saved. What more does any Anti-
Augustinian scheme provide ? The advocates of such schemes
say, that the design of the work of Christ was to render the salva-
tion of all men possible. All they can mean by this is, that if any
man (elect or non-elect) believes, he shall, on the ground of Avhat
Christ has done, be certainly saved. But Augustinians say the
same thing. Their doctrine provides for this universal offer of sal-
vation, as well as any other scheme. It teaches that God in effect-
ing the salvation of his own people, did whatever was necessary
for the salvation of all men, and therefore to all the offer may be,
and in fact is made in the gospel. If a ship containing the wife
and children of a man standing on the shore is wrecked, he may
seize a boat and hasten to their rescue. His motive is love to his
family ; his purpose is to save them. But the boat which he has
provided may be large enough to receive the whole of the ship's
company. Would there be any inconsistency in his offering them
the opportunity to escape ? Or, would this offer prove that he had
no special love to his own family and no special design to secure
their safety. And if any or all of tliose to whom the offer was
made, should refuse to accept it, some from one reason, some from
another ; some because they did not duly appreciate their danger ;
some because they thought they could save themselves ; and some
from enmity to the man from whom the offer came, their guilt and
folly would be just as great as though the man had no special re-
gard to his own family, and no special purpose to effect their deliv-
erance. Or, if a man's family were with others held in captivity,
and from love to them and with the purpose of their redemption, a
ransom should be offered sufficient for the delivery of the whole
body of captives, it is plain that the offer of deliverance might
be extended to all on the ground of that ransom, although spe-
cially intended only for a part of their number. Or, a man may
make a feast for his own friends, and the provision be so abundant
that he may throw open his doors to all who are willing to come.
This is precisely what God, according to the Augustinian doctrine,
has actually done. Out of special love to his people, and with the
design of securing their salvation. He has sent his Son to do what
justifies the offer of salvation to all who choose to accept of it.
Christ, therefore, did not die equally for all men. He laid down
his life for his sheep ; He gave Himself for his Church. But in
perfect consistency with all this, He did all that was necessary, so
far as a satisfaction to justice is concerned, all that is required for
§2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 557
the salvation of all men. So that all Augustinians can join with
the Synod of Dort in saying, " No man perishes for want of an
atonement."
If the Atonement he limited in Design^ it must he restricted in
the Offer.
There is still another ground on which it is urged that Augus-
tinians cannot consistently preach the gospel to every creature.
Augustinians teach, it is urged, that the work of Christ is a satis-
faction to divine justice. From this it follows that justice cannot
condemn those for whose sins it has been satisfied. It cannot
demand that satisfaction twice, first from the substitute and then
from the sinner himself. This would be manifestly unjust, far
worse than demanding no punishment at all. From this it is
inferred that the satisfaction or righteousness of Christ, if the
ground on which a sinner may be forgiven, is the ground on which
he must be forgiven. It is not the ground on which he may be
forgiven, unless it is the ground on which he must be forgiven. If
the atonement be limited in design it must be limited in its
nature, and if limited in its nature it must be limited in its offer.
This objection again arises from confounding a pecuniary and a
judicial satisfaction between which Augustinians are so careful to
discriminate. Tiiis distinction has already been presented on a
previous page (470). There is no grace in accepting a pecuni-
ary satisfaction. It cannot be refused. It ipso facto liberates.
The moment the debt is paid the debtor is free ; and that without
any condition. Nothing of this is true in the case of judicial satis-
faction. If a substitute be provided and accepted it is a matter of
gi'ace. His satisfaction does not ipso facto liberate. It may accrue
to the benefit of those for whom it is made at once or at a remote
period ; completely or gradually; on conditions or unconditionally;
or it may never benefit them at all unless the condition on which
its application is suspended be performed. These facts are uni-
versally admitted by those who hold that the work of Christ was a
true and perfect satisfaction to divine justice. The application of
its benefits is determined by the covenant between the Father and
the Son. Those for whom it was specially rendered are not justi-
fied from eternity ; they are not born in a justified state ; they are
by nature, or birth, the children of wi'ath even as others. To be
the children of wrath is to be justly exposed to divine wrath. They
remain in this state of exposure until they believe, and should they
die (unless in infancy) before they believe they would inevitably
558 PART m. Cm. VIII. — for WHOM DID CHRIST DIE?
perisli notwithstanding the satisfaction made for their sins. It is tlie
stipulations of the covenant which forbid such a result. Such being
the nature of the judicial satisfaction rendered by Christ to the law,
under which all men are placed, it may be sincerely offered to all
men with the assurance that if they believe it shall accrue to their
salvation. His work being specially designed for the salvation of
his own people, renders, through the conditions of the covenant,
that event certain ; but this is perfectly consistent with its being
made the ground of the general offer of the gospel. Lutherans and
Reformed agree entirely, as before stated, in their views of the
nature of the satisfaction of Christ, and consequently, so far as that
point is concerned, there is the same foundation for the general
offer of the gospel according to either scheme. What the Reformed
or Augustinians hold about election does not affect the nature of
the atonement. That remains the same whether designed for the
elect or for all mankind. It does not derive its nature from the
secret purpose of God as to its application.
Certain Passages of Scripture considered.
Admitting, however, that the Augustinian doctrine that Christ
died specially for his own people does account for the general offer
of the gospel, how Is it to be reconciled with those passages which,
in one form or another, teach that He died for all men ? In answer
to this question, it may be remarked in the first place that Augus-
tinians do not deny that Christ' died for all men. What they deny
is that He died equally, and with the same design, for all men. He
died for all, that He might arrest the immediate execution of the
penalty of the law upon the whole of our apostate race ; that He
mif^ht secure for men the innumerable blessino;s attendlno; their
state on earth, which, in one important sense, is a state of proba-
tion ; and that He might lay the foundation for the offer of pardon
and reconciliation with God, on condition of faith and repentance.
These are the universally admitted consequences of his satisfaction,
and therefore they all come within Its design. By this dispensation
it is rendered manifest to every intelligent mind in heaven and
upon earth, and to the finally impenitent themselves, that the per-
dition of those that perish is their own fault. They will not come
to Christ that they may have life. They refuse to have Him to
reign over them. He calls but they will not answer. He says,
"Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." Every
human being who does come is saved. This is what is meant
when it is said, or implied in Scripture, that Christ gave Himself
§ 2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 559
as a propitiation, not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole
world. He was a propitiation efFectuallj for the sins of his people,
and sufficiently for the sins of the whole world. Augustinians
have no need to wrest the Scriptures. They are under no neces-
sity of departing from their fundamental principle that it is the
duty of the theologian to subordinate his theories to the Bible, and
teach not what seems to him to be true or reasonable, but simply
what the Bible teaches.
But, in the second place, it is to be remarked that general terms
are often used indefinitely and not comprehensively. They mean
all kinds, or classes, and not all and every individual. When
Christ said, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto me," He meant men of all ages, classes, and conditions, and
not every individual man. When God predicted that upon the
advent of the Messiah He would pour out his Spirit upon all flesh,
all that was foretold was a general effusion of the Holy Ghost. And
when it is said that all men shall see (experience) the salvation of
God, it does not mean that all men individually, but that a vast
multitude of all classes shall be saved. The same remark applies
to the use of the term world. It means men, mankind, as a race
or order of beings. No one hesitates to call the Lord Jesus the
" Salvator hominum." He is so hailed and so worshipped wherever
his name is known. But no one means by this that He actually
saves all mankind. What is meant is that He is our Saviour, the
Saviour of men, not of angels, not of Jews exclusively, nor yet of the
Gentiles only, not of the rich, or of the poor alone, not of the right-
eous only, but also of publicans and sinners. He is the Saviour of
all men who come unto Him. Thus when He is called the Lamb
of God that bears the sin of the world, all that is meant is that
He bears the sins of men ; He came as a sin-offering bearing not
his own, but the sins of others.
In the third place, these general terms are always to be under-
stood in reference to the things spoken of in the context. When
all things, the universe, is said to be put in subjection to Christ it
is, of course, to be understood of the created universe. In 1 Corin-
thians XV. 27, Paul expressl}' mentions this limitation, but in He-
brews ii. 8, it is not mentioned. It Is, however, just as obviously
involved in the one passage as in the other. When in Romans v.
18, it is said that by the righteousness of Christ the free gift of
justification of life has come upon all men, it is of necessity lim-
ited to the all in Clirist of whom the Apostle is speaking. So also
in 1 Corinthians xv. 22, As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall
560 PART III. Ch. Vm. — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
all be made alive (jiiMoiroL-qOrja-ovrai^ {, e., quickened with the life of
Christ), it is in both members of the sentence not absolutely all,
but the all in Adam and the all in Christ. This is still more obvi-
ous in Romans viii. 32, where it is said that God gave up his own
Son for us all. The us refers to the class of persons of which the
whole chapter treats, namely, of those to whom there is no con-
demnation, who are led by the Spirit, for whom Christ intercedes,
etc. Epiiesians i. 10, and Colossians i. 20, are favourite texts
with the Universalists, for they teach that all in heaven and on
earth are reunited unto God by Jesus Christ. They are right in
understanding these passages as teaching the salvation of all men,
if by all in this connection we must understand all human beings.
But why limit the word to all men? Why not include angels and
even irrational creatures ? The answer is, because the Bible teaches
that Christ came to save men, and neither angels nor irrational
animals. This is only saying that all must be limited to the objects
of redemption. Who they are is to be learned not from these gen-
eral terms, but from the general teaching of Scripture. The all who
are to be united in one harmonious body by Jesus Christ are the all
whom He came to save. The same remark applies to Hebrews ii.
9, Christ tasted " death (un-e^ ■n-avTo^') for every man." It is well
known that Origen understood this of every creature ; others, of
every rational creature ; others, of every fallen rational creature ;
others, of every man ; others, of every one of those given to the Son
by the Father. How are we to decide which of these interpreta-
tions is correct? So far as the mere signification of the words is con-
cerned, one is as correct as another. It is only from the analogy of
Scripture that the meaning of the sacred writer can be determined.
Christ tasted death for every one of the objects of redemption.
Whether He came to redeem all created sensuous beings, or all
rational creatures, or all men, or all given to Him in the councils
of eternity, the Bible must decide. The great majority of the
passages quoted to prove that Christ died equally for all men coms
under one or other of the classes just mentioned, and have no real
bearing on the question concerning the design of his death.
There is another class of passages with which it is said that the
Augustinian doctrine cannot be reconciled ; such, namely, as speak
of those perishing for whom Christ died. In reference to these
passages it may be remarked, first, that there is a sense, as befoi-e
stated, in which Christ did die for all men. His death had the
effect of justifying the offer of salvation to every man ; and of course
was designed to have that effect. He therefore died sufficiently
§ 2.] PROOF OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE. 561
for all. In the second place, these passages are, in some cases at
least, hypothetical. When Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to
cause those to perish for whom Christ died, he merely exhorts
them not to act selfishly towards those for whom Christ had exhib-
ited the greatest compassion. The passage neither asserts nor im-
plies that any actually perish for whom Christ died. None perish
whom He came to save ; multitudes perish to whom salvation is
offered on the ground of his death.
As God in the course of nature and in the dispensation of his
providence, moves on in undisturbed majesty, little concerned at
the apparent complication or even inconsistency of one effect or
one dispensation with another; so the Spirit of God in the Bible
unfolds the purposes, truths, and dealings of God, just as they are,
assured that even finite minds will ultimately be able to see the con-
sistency of all his revelations. The doctrines of foreordination,
sovereignty, and effectual providential control, go hand in hand
with those of" the liberty and responsibility of rational creatures.
Those of freedom from the law, of salvation by faith without works,
and of the absolute necessity of holy living stand side by side. On
the same page we find the assurance of God's love to sinners, and
declarations that He would that all men should come unto Him and
live, with explicit assertions that He has determined to leave mul-
titudes to perish in their sins. In like manner, the express declara-
tions that it was the incomprehensible and peculiar love of God for
his own people, which Induced Him to send his Son for their re-
demption ; that Christ came into the world for that specific object ;
that He died for his sheep ; that He gave Himself for his Church ;
and that the salvation of all for whom He thus offered Himself is
rendered certain by the gift of the Spirit to bring them to faith and
repentance, are intermingled witii declarations of good-will to all
mankind, with offers of salvation to every one who will believe in
the Son of God, and denunciations of wrath against those who
reject these overtures of mercy. All we have to do is not to ignore
or deny either of these modes of representation, but to open our
minds wide enough to receive them both, and reconcile them as
best we can. Both are true, in all the cases above referred to,
whether we can see their consistency or not.
In the review of this subject, it is plain that the doctrine that
Christ died equally for all men with the purpose of rendering the
salvation of all possible, has no advantage over the doctrine that
He died specially for his own people, and with the purpose of
rendering their salvation certain. It presents no higher view of
VOL. II. 36
562 PART m. Ch. Vm. — for whom did CHRIST DIE?
the love of God, or of the value of Christ's work. It affoi-ds no
better ground for the offer of salvation " to every creature," nor
does it render more obvious the justice of the condemnation of
those who reject the gospel. They are condemned by God, angels,
and men, and by their own consciences, because they refuse to
believe that Jesus is the Son of God, God manifest in the flesh,
and to love, worship, trust, and obey Him accordingly. The op-
posite, or anti-Augustinian doctrine, is founded on a partial view
of the facts of the case. It leaves out of view the clearly revealed
special love of God to his peculiar people ; the union between Christ
and his chosen ; the representative character which He assumed
as their substitute ; the certain efficacy of his sacrifice in virtue
of the covenant of redemption ; and the necessary connection be-
tween the gift of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. It more-
over leads to confused and inconsistent views of the plan of salva-
tion, and to unscriptural and dangerous theories of the nature of
the atonement. It therefore is the limited and meagre scheme ;
whereas the orthodox doctrine is catholic and comprehensive ; full
of consolation and spiritual power, as well as of justice to all man-
kind.
CHAPTER IX.
THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
The history of this doctrine is commonly divided into three pe-
riods, the Patristic ; the Scholastic ; and the time of the Reforma-
tion and from that event to the present day. The method which
the writers on this subject have usually adopted, is to pass in re-
view in chronological order the distinguished theologians living
during these several periods, and present a general outline of the
teaching of each.
The two great objects to be accomplished by the work of Christ
are, the removal of the curse under which mankind laboured on
account of sin ; and their restoration to the image and fellowship
of God. Both these are essential to salvation. We have guilt to
be removed, and souls dead in sin to be quickened with a new
principle of divine life. Both these objects are provided for in the
doctrine of redemption as presented in the Scriptures and held in
the Church. In the opposing theories devised by theologians, either
one of these objects is ignored or one is unduly subordinated to
the other. It was characteristic of the early Greek church to
exalt the latter, while the Latin made the former the more promi-
nent. In reviewing the history of the doctrine it will be found
that there are five general theories which comprise all the numer-
ous forms in which it has been held.
§ 1. The Orthodox View.
The first is that which has been for ages regarded as the ortho-
dox doctrine ; in its essential features common to the Latin, Lu-
theran, and Reformed churches. This is the doctrine which the
writer has endeavoured to exhibit and vindicate in the preceding
pages. According to this doctrine the work of Christ is a real sat-
isfaction, of infinite inherent merit, to the vindicatory justice of
God ; so that He saves his people by doing for them, and in their
stead, what they were unable to do for themselves, satisfying the
demands of the law in their behalf, and bearing its penalty in their
stead ; whereby they are reconciled to God, receive the Holy
664 PART ni. Ch. IX. — theories of the atonement.
Ghost, and are made partakers of the life of Christ to their present
sanctification and eternal salvation.
This doctrine provides for both the great objects above men-
tioned. It shows how the curse of the law is removed by Christ's
being made a curse for us ; and how in virtue of this reconciliation
with God we become, through the Spirit, partakers of the life of
Christ. He is made unto us not only rigliteousness, but sanctifica-
tion. We are cleansed by his blood from guilt, and renewed by
his Spirit after the image of God. Having died in Him, we live in
Him. Participation of his death secures participation of his life.
§ 2. Doctrine of some of the Fathers.
The second theory is that which prevailed extensively among the
fathers. It was intended only as a solution of the question how
Christ delivers us from the power of Satan. It contemplated
neither the removal of guilt nor the restoration of divine life ; but
simply our deliverance from the power of Satan. It was founded
on those passages of Scriptures which represent man since the fall
as in bondage to the prince of darkness. The object of redemption
was to deliver mankind from this bondage. This could only be
done by in some way overcoming Satan and destroying his right
or power to hold men as his slaves. This Christ has effected, and
thus becomes the Redeemer of men. This general theory is pre-
sented in thi'ee different forms. The first appeals to the old prin-
ciple of the rights of war, according to which the conquered be-
came the slaves of the conqueror. Satan conquered Adam, and
thus became the rightful owner of him and his posterity. Hence
he is called the god and prince of this world. To deliver men
from this dreadftil bondage, Christ offered Himself as a ransom to
Satan. Satan accepted the offer, and renounced his right to retain
mankind as his slaves. Christ, however, broke the bonds of Satan,
whose power was founded upon the sinfulness of his subjects.
Christ being divine, and without sin, could not be held subject to
his power. In answer to the question. How Satan could accept
Christ as the ransom for men, if he knew Him to be a divine per-
son ? it was said that he did not know Him to be divine, because
his divinity was veiled by his humanity. And then in answer to
the question. How he could accept of Him as a ransom, if he re-
garded Him as merely a man ? it is said that he saw that Christ
was unspeakably superior to other men, and perhaps one of the
higher order of angels, whom he might hope securely to retain.
The second form of this theory does not regard Christ as a ransom
§ 2.] PATRISTICAL THEORY. 565
paid to Satan, but as a conqueror. As Satan conquered mankind
and made them his slaves ; so Christ became a man, and, in our
nature, conquered Satan ; and thus acquired the right to dehver
us from our bondage and to consign Satan himself to chains and
darkness.
The third form of the theory is, that as the right and power of
Satan over man is founded on sin, he exceeded his authority when
he brought about the death of Christ, who was free from all sin ;
and thus justly forfeited his authority over men altogether. This
general theory that Christ's great work, as a Redeemer, was to
deliver man from bondage to Satan, and that the ransom was paid
to Him and not to God ; or that the difficulty in the way of our
salvation was the right which Satan had acquired to us as slaves,
which right Christ in some way cancelled, was very prevalent for
a long time in the Church. It is found in Irenaeus, Origen, The-
odoret, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, Jerome, Hilary, Leo
the Great, and others.^ The Scriptural foundation for this view of
the work of Christ is very slight. It is true that men are the cap-
tives of Satan, and under his dominion. It is true that Christ gave
Himself as a ransom ; and that by the payment of that ransom we
are freed from bondage to the prince of darkness. But it does not
follow that the ransom was paid to Satan, or that he had any just
claim to his authority over the children of men. What the Scrip-
tures teach on this subject is, —
1. That man by sin became subject to the penalty of the divine
law.
2. That Satan has the office of inflicting that penalty in so far
as he is allowed to torment and degrade the children of men.
3. That Christ by his death having satisfied the penalty of the
law, of course has delivered us from the power of Satan. See
especially Hebrews ii. 14. But this gives no ground for the doc-
trine that Satan had any claim in justice to hold mankind as his
slaves; or that Christ offered Himself as a ransom to the prince
of this world. This doctrine was strenuously opposed in the early
Church by Gregory of Nyssa, and has long since passed into obliv-
ion. The only interest which it now has is as a matter of history.
It is of course not to be supposed that the great lights of the Church
above mentioned believed that the whole work of Christ as the
Saviour of men consisted in his delivering us from the power of
1 The proof passages are given more or less at length in all the modern histories of doc-
trine as in Hagenbach's Dogmenfjeschickte, translated by Dr. B. H. Smith; Miinscher's,
and Neander's Do<jmengeschichte, and especially in the elaborate work of Baur of Tiibingen,
Die Lelire von der Versohnunq.
566 PART in. Ch. IX. — theories of the atonement.
Satan ; that they ignored his office as a liigh priest unto God, or
denied the effect of his death as an expiation for sin, or forgot that
He is to us the source of spiritual life. These doctrines are as
clearly asserted by them from time to time as are their peculiar views
as to our deliverance from the bondage of Satan. Even Origen, so
unrestrained in his thinking, and so disposed to explain Christian
truths philosophically, teaches the catholic doctrine with perfect
distinctness. In his comment on Romans iii. 25, 26, he says,^
" Cum dixisset, quod pro omni genere humano redemptionem
semetipsum dedisset, .... nunc addit aliquid sublimius et dicit,
quia ' proposuit eum Deus propitiationem per fidem in sanguine
ipsius : ' quo scilicet per hostiam sui corporis propitium hominibus
faceret Deum, et per hoc ostenderet justitiam suam Deus
enim Justus est, et Justus justificare non poterat inj'ustos, ideo inter-
ventum voluit esse propitiatoris, ut per ejus fidem justificarentur
qui per opera propria justificari non poterant." No one of the
Reformers gives a clearer utterance to tlie truth than is contained
in these words. So also he says,^ " Posuit ergo et manum suam
super caput vituli : hoc est peccata generis humani im posuit super
caput suum. Ipse est enim caput corporis ecclesias suae." In
all ages of the Church, by the early fathers as well as in subsequent
periods, the language of the New Testament in reference to Christ
and his work is retained. He is familiarly called priest, and high
priest, and held up as a sacrifice for sin, as a redeemer, as a ran-
som, and as one who cancelled our debts. As the early fathers
were conversant with sacrifices, and knew the light in which they
were regarded by the ancient world, that both heathen and Jewish
sacrifices were expiatory, there is little doubt that the fathers, in
calling Christ a sacrifice, meant to recognize Him as an expiation
for our sins, although it is admitted that great vagueness, variety,
and inconsistency prevail in their utterances on this subject. The
whole activity of the cultivated minds was in the early ages directed
first to the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ,
and subsequently to those concerning sin and grace.
§ 3. The Moral Theory/.
A third general theory concerning the work of Christ is that
which rejects all idea of expiation, or of the satisfaction of justice
by vicarious punishment, and attributes all the efficacy of his
work to the moral effect produced on the hearts of men by his
1 Works, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1759, vol. iv. p. 513, B, a, b, c.
■^ In Leviticum Homilia, i. 3; Works, edit. Paris, 1733, vol. ii. p. 186, d.
§3.] MORAL THEORY. 567
character, teachings, and acts. On this 'account it is usually des-
ignated the " moral view of the atonement." The assumption
is that there is no such attribute in God as justice ; i. e., no per-
fection which renders it necessary, or morally obligatory, tliat sin
should be punished. If this be so, there is no need of expiation in
order to forgiveness. All that is necessary for the restoration of
sinners to the favour of God is that they should cease to be sin-
ners. God's relation to his rational creatures is determined by tiieir
character. If they are morally corrupt they are repelled from
his presence ; if restored to holiness, they become the objects of
his love and the recipients of his favours. All that Christ as the
Saviour of men, therefore, came to accomplish was this moral ref-
ormation in the character of men. Here, as so generally elsewhere,
errors are half truths. It is true that God's relation to his rational
creatures is determined by their character. It is true that He
repels sinners, and holds communion with the holy. It is true that
Christ came to restore men to holiness, and thus to the favour and
fellowship of God. But it is also true that to render the restora-
tion of sinners to holiness possible it was necessary that the guilt
of their sins should be expiated, or that justice should be satisfied.
Until this is done, they are under the wrath and curse of God.
And to be under the curse of God is to be shut out from the source
of all holiness.
Some of the advocates of this view of the work of Christ do
indeed speak freely of the justice of God. They recognize Him as
a just Being who everywhere and always punishes sin. But this
is done only by the operation of eternal laws. Holiness, from its
nature, produces happiness; and that is its reward. Sin, from its
nature, produces misery; and tliat is its j)unishment. Remove the
sin and you remove the punishment. The case is analogous to
health and disease. If a man is well, he is physically happy ; if
diseased, he is in a state of suffering. The only way possible to
remove the suffering is to remove the disease ; and further than
this nothing can be required. This is the view presented by John
Young, D. D.i He says, " There is no such attribute in God [as
rectilineal justice.] But the inevitable punishment of moral evil
always and everywhere, is certain nevertheless. The justice of the
universe is a tremendous fact, an eternal and necessary fact which
even God could not set aside. There is an irresistible, a real force
springing out of its essential constitution whereby sin punishes sin.
This is the fixed law of the moral universe, a law in perfect har-
1 Lt/t and Li\(/hl of Men, Lontlon and New York, 1866, pp. 115, 116.
568 PART in. Cii. IX.— THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
mony with the eternal will, and which never is aiul never can be
broken. God's mercy in our Lord Jesus Christ does not in the
least set aside this justice ; what it does is to remove and render
non-existent the only ground on which the claim of justice stands.
Instead of arbitrarily withdrawing the criminal from punishment, it
destroys in his soul tliat evil which is the only cause and reason of
punishment, and which being removed punisliment ceases of itself."
The same doctrine is taught by Dr. BushnelL^ Speaking of Christ,
he says, " His work terminates, not in the release of penalties by
due compensation, but in the transformation of character, and the
rescue, in that manner, of guilty men from the retributive causa-
tions provoked by their sins." Remission is declared to be " spir-
itual release ; " a deliverance from sin which secures exemption
from the natural effects of transgression. This system necessarily
excludes the idea of forgiveness in the ordinary sense of the word.
To subdue inflammation in a wound removes the pain ; to remove
sin from the soul secures exemption from the pain which sin neces-
sarily produces. The idea of pardon, in the latter case, is as in-
congruous as in the former. The Bible, however, is full of the
promises of forgiveness and of the prayers of the penitent for par-
doning mercy. It is very plain, therefore, that this scheme does
not agree with the Scriptures ; and it is equally plain that it is not
a religion suited to those who feel the need of forgiveness.
Coleridge, in his " Aids to Reflection," presents the same view.
In a note at the end of that work he gives the following illustration
of the subject. A widow has a prodigal son, who deserts her and
leaves her desolate. That son has a friend who takes his place and
performs all filial duties to the unhappy mother. The prodigal, won
by tlie exhibition of goodness on the part of his friend, returns to his
home penitent and reformed. How unreasonable and revolting,
says Coleridge, would it be to say that the friend had made expia-
tion or rendered a satisfaction to justice for the sins of the prodigal.
This moral view of the atonement, as it is called, has been pre-
sented in different forms. In the first form the work of Christ in
the salvation of men is confined to his office of teacher. He intro-
duced a new and higher form of I'eligion, by which men were re-
deemed from the darkness and degradation of heathenism. This
was so great a good, and so patent to the eyes of those who them-
selves were converts from heathenism, and who were surrounded
bv its evils, that it is not wonderful that some of the fathers ex-
1 Vicarlmis Sacrifice grounded in Principles of Universal Ob!i<j'ition, edit. New York,
18G6, p. 449.
I
§3.] MORAL THEORY. 569
alted this function of Christ as a saviour, almost to the neglect of
every other. In the early Cimrch, however, frequent as were the
recoonitions of the obligations of men to Christ as the Redeemer
from heathenism. He was still regarded by all Christians as a sacri-
fice and a ransom. In later times these latter aspects of his work
were rejected and the former only retained.
A second form of this theory, while it retains the idea that
ftie real benefit conferred by Christ was his doctrine, yet ascribes
his title of Saviour principally to his death. As the Scriptures so
constantly assert that we are saved by the blood, the cross, the
sufferings of Christ, this feature of the Scriptural teaching cannot
be overlooked. It is therefore said that He saves us, not as a sacri-
fice, but as a martyr. He died for us. By his death his doctrines
were sealed with blood. Not only, therefore, as attesting his own
sincerity, but as giving assurance of the truths which He taught,
especially the truths concerning a future life, the love of God, and
his willingness to forgive sin, and as confirming to us the truth of
those doctrines He is entitled to be regarded as the Saviour of
men.
Thirdly, others again regard the power of Christ in saving men
from sin, as not due to his teaching, or to his sealing his doctrines
with his blood, but to the manifestation which He made of self-
sacrificing love. This exerts a greater power over the hearts of
men than all else besides. If the wicked cannot be reclaimed by
love, which manifests itself not only in words of gentleness, by
acts of kindness, and by expressions of sj-mpathy, but also by en-
tire self-saci'ifice, by the renunciation of all good, and by voluntary
submission to all evil, their case must be hopeless. As such love
as that of Christ was never before exhibited to men ; as no such
instance of self-sacrifice had ever before occurred, or can ever
occur again. He is the Saviour by way of eminence. Other men,
who through love submit to self-denial for the good of men, are
within their sphere and in their measure, saviours too ; the work
of salvation by the exhibition of self-sacrificing love, is going on
around us continually, and from eternity to eternity, so long as evil
exists, in the presence of beings imbued with love. Still Christ in
this work occupies a place peculiar and preeminent, and therefore
we are Christians ; we recognize Christ as the greatest of Sav-
iours.
Such is the view elaborately presented by Dr. Bushnell in the
work just referred to. Toward the end of his book, however, he
virtually takes it all back, and lays down his weapons, conquered
670 PART m. Ch. IX. — theories of the atonement.
by the instincts of his own religious nature and by the authority
of the Word of God. He says, " In the facts [of our Lord's pas-
sion], outwardly regarded, there is no sacrifice, or oblation, or
atonement, or propitiation, but simply a living and dying thus and
thus. The facts are impressive ; the person is clad in a wonderful
dignity and beauty ; the agony is eloquent of love ; and the cross
a very shocking murder triumphantly met. And if then the ques-
tion arises, how we are to use such a histoiy so as to be reconciled
by it, we hardly know in what way to begin. How shall we come
unto God by help of this martyrdom? How shall we turn it, or
turn ourselves under it, so as to be justified and set in peace with
God ? Plainly there is a want here, and this want is met by giv-
ing a thought-form to the facts which is not in the facts themselves.
They are put directly into the moulds of the altar, and we are
called to accept the crucified God-man as our saci'ifice, an offering
or oblation for us, our propitiation ; so as to be sprinkled from our
evil conscience, washed, purged, purified, cleansed from our sin.
Instead of leaving the matter of the facts just as they occurred,
there is a reverting to familiar forms of thought, made familiar
partly for this purpose ; and we are told, in brief, to use the facts
just as we would the sin-offerings of the altar, and make an altar
grace of them, only a grace complete and perfect, an offering
once for all So much is there in this that, without these
forms of the altar, we should be utterly at a loss in making any use
of the Christian facts, that would set us in a condition of practical
reconciliation with God. Christ is good, beautiful, wonderful, his
disinterested love is a picture by itself, his forgiving patience melts
into my feeling, his passion rends open my heart, but what is He
for, and how shall He be made unto me the salvation I want ? One
■word — He is my sacrifice — opens all to me, and beholding
Him, with all my sin upon Him, I count Him my offering, I come
unto God by Him and enter into the holiest by his blood." " We
want to use these altar terms just as freely as they are used by
those who accept the formula of expiation or judicial satisfaction
for sin ; in just their manner too, when they are using them most
practically." " We cannot aflford to lose these sacred forms of the
altar. They fill an office which nothing else can fill, and serve a
use which cannot be served without them." ^
1 Bushnell On Vicarious Sacrifice, edit. New York, 1866, pp. 534, 535; p. 537; p. 545.
§3.J MORAL THEORY. 571
Objections to this Theory.
The obvious objections to this moral view of the atonement in
all its forms, are, —
1. That while it retains some elements of the truth, in that it
recognizes the restoration of man to holiness and God, as the great
end of the work of Christ, and regards his work as involving the
greatest possible or conceivable manifestation of divine love, which
manifestation is the most powerful of all natural influences to
operate on the hearts of men ; yet it leaves out entirely what is
essential to the Scriptural doctrine of atonement. The Bible
exhibits Christ as a priest, as offering Himself a sacrifice for the
expiation of our sins, as bearing our sins in his own body on the
tree, as having been made a curse for us, and as giving Himself
as a ransom for our redemption. The Scriptures teach that this
expiation of guilt is absolutely necessary before the souls of the
guilty can be made the subjects of renewing and sanctifying
grace. Before this expiation they are spiritually dead under the
penalty of the law, which is death in all its forms. And therefore
while thus under the curse, all the moral influences in the world
would be as useless as noonday light to give sight to the blind, or
sanitary measures to raise the dead. In rejecting, therefore, the
doctrine of expiation, or satisfaction to justice, this theory rejects
the very essence of the Scriptural doctrine of atonement.
2. This theory does not meet the necessities of our condition.
We are sinners ; we are guilty as well as polluted. The conscious-
ness of our responsibility to justice, and of the necessity of satisfy-
ing its demands, is as undeniable and as indestructible as our con-
sciousness of pollution. Expiation for the one is as much a
necessity as sanctification for the other. No form of religion, there-
fore, which excludes the idea of expiation, or which fails to provide
for the removal of guilt in a way which satisfies the reason and
conscience, can be suited to our necessities. No such religion has
ever prevailed among men, or can by possibility give peace to a
bui'dened conscience. It is because the Lord Jesus Christ is re-
vealed as a propitiation for our sins, as bearing in our stead the
penalty which we had incurred, that his blood cleanses us from all
sin, and gives that peace which passes all understanding.
The idea that there is no forgiveness with God ; that by inex-
orable law He deals with his creatures according to their subjective
state and character, and that therefore the only salvation necessary
or possible is sanctification, is appalling. No man is in such an
572 PART III. Ch. IX. — theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
inward state, either during life or at death, that he can stand before
God to be dealt with according to that state. His only hope is
that God will, and does, deal with his people, not as they are in
themselves, but as they are in Christ, and for his sake ; that He
loves and has fellowship with us although polluted and defiled, as
a parent loves and delights in a misshapen and unattractive child.
We should be now and always in hell, if the doctrine of Dr.
Young were true, that justice by an inexorable law always takes
effect, and that sin is always punished wherever it exists, as soon
as it is manifested, and as long as it continues, God is something
more than the moral order of the universe ; He does not adminis-
ter his moral government by inexorable laws over which He has
no control. He can have mercy on whom He will have mercy,
and compassion on whom He will have compassion. He can and
does render sinners happy, in spite of their sin, for Christ's sake,
remitting to them its penalty while its power is only partially
broken ; fostering them, and rejoicing over them until their restora-
tion to spiritual health be completed. Anything that turns the
sinner's regard inward on himself as a ground of hope, instead of
bidding him look to Christ, must plunge him into despair, and
despair is the portal of eternal death. In any view, therefore,
whether as bold rationalistic Deism, or as the most high-toned por-
traiture of divine love, the moral theory of the atonement presents
no rational, because no Scriptural, ground for a sinner's hope toward
God. He must have a better righteousness than his own. He
must have some one to appear before God in his stead to make
expiation for sin, and to secure for him, independently of his own
subjective state, the full pardon of all his offences, and the gift of
the Holy Ghost.
3. All the arguments presented on the preceding pages, in
favour of the doctrine of expiation, are of course arguments against
a theory which rejects that doctrine. Besides, this theory evi-
dently changes the whole plan of salvation. It alters all our rela-
tions to Christ, as our head and representative, and the ground of
our acceptance with God ; and consequently it changes the nature
of religion. Christianity is one thing if Christ is a sacrifice for
sin ; and altogether a different thing if He is onl}^ a moral reformer,
an example, a teacher, or even a martyr. We need a divine Saviour
if He is to bear our iniquities, and to make satisfaction for the sins
of the world ; but a human saviour is all that is needed if the
moral theory of the atonement is to be adopted. Gieseler says,
what every Christian knows must be true without being told, that
I
§ 4.] GOVERNMENTAL THEORY. 573
the fatliers in treating of the qualifications of Christ as a Saviour,
insisted that He must be, (1.) God ; (2.) a man ; and (3.) as man
free from sin.^ It is a liistorical fact that the two doctrines of tlie
divinity of Clirist, and expiation through the blood of the Son of
God, have gone hand in hand. Tiie one has seldom been long
held by those who deny the other. The doctrine of expiation,
therefore, is so wrouglit into the whole system of revealed truth,
that its rejection eflfects a radical change, not only in the theology,
but also in the religion of the Bible.
§ 4. The Crovernmental Theory.
This theory was introduced into the Church by Grotius, in the
seventeenth century. He wrote in opposition to the Socinians, and
therefore his book is entitled: "Defensio fidei catholicaa de satis-
factione Christi." It is in point of learning and ability all that
could be expected from one of the greatest men of his generation.
The design with which the book was written, and the universally
received formulas of expression at that time prevailing, to the use
of which Grotius adheres, give his work an aspect of orthodoxy.
He speaks of satisfaction to justice, of propitiation, of the penal
character of our Lord's sufFerino-s, of his death as a vicarious sacri-
fice, and of his bearing the guilt of our sins. In short, so far as the
use of terms is concerned, there is hardly any departure from the
doctrine of the Reformed Church, of which he was then a member.
Different principles, however, underlaid his whole theory, and,
therefore, a different sense was to be attached to the terms he
used. There was, after all, no real satisfaction of justice, no real
substitution, and no real enduring of the penalty of the law. His
Socinian opponents, when they came to answer his book, said that
he had given up all the main principles in dispute. Grotius was a
jurist as well as a theologian, and looked at the whole subject from
a juridical standpoint. Tlie main elements of his theory are, —
1. That in the forgiveness of sin God is to be regarded neither
as an offended party, nor as a creditor, nor as a master, but as a
moral governor. A creditor can remit the debt due to him at
pleasure ; a master may punish or not punish as he sees fit ; but a
ruler must act, not according to his feelings or caprice, but with a
view to the best interests of those under his authority. Grotius
says that the overlooking the distinctions above indicated is the
fundamental error of the Socinians.^ In opposition to this view, he
1 DogmengescMchte, pp. 384, 385, beinc; the sixth volume of his Ecclesiasticnl History.
2 Be Satisfactione, u. [§ 3] ; Worka, edit. London, 1679, vol. iii. p. 307, a, 25-34. " Vult
574 PART III. Ch. IX. — theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
says : "■ Omnino hie Deum considerandum, ut rectorem. Nam
poenas infligere, aut a poem's aliquem liberare, quern punire pos-
sis, quod justificare vocat Scriptura, non est nisi rectoris qua talis
prime et per se : ut, puta, in familia patris ; in republiea regis, in
universe Dei." ^
2. The end of punishment is the prevention of crime, or the
preservation of order and the promotion of the best interests of the
community. " Justitiae rectoris pars est servare leges etiam positi-
vas et a se latas, quod verum esse tarn in universitate libera quam
in rege summo probant jurisconsulti : cui illud est consequens, ut
rectori relaxare legem non liceat, nisi causa aliqua accedat, si non
necessaria, certe sufficiens : quae itidem recepta est a jurisconsultis
sententia. Ratio utriusque est, quod actus ferendi aut relaxandi
legem non sit actus absoluti dominii, sed actus imperii, qui tendere
debeat ad boni ordinis conversationem." ^ On a previous page, he
had said, in more general terms : " Poena omnis propositum habet
bonum commune, ordinis nimirum conservationem et exemplum."
3. As a good governor cannot allow sin to be committed with
immunity, God cannot pardon the sins of men without some ade-
quate exhibition of his displeasure, and of his determination to
punish it. This was the design of the sufferings and death of
Christ. God punished sin in Him as an example. This example
was the more impressive on account of the dignity of Christ's per-
son, and therefore in view of his death, God can consistently with
the best interests of his government remit the penalty of the law
in the case of penitent believers.
4. Punishment, Grotius defined as suffering inflicted on account
of sin. It need not be imposed on account of the personal demerit
of the sufferer ; nor with the design of satisfying justice, in the ordi-
nary and proper sense of that word. It was enough that it should
be on account of sin. As the sufferings of Christ were caused by
our sins, insomuch as they were designed to render their remis-
sion consistent with the interest of God's moral government, they
fall within this comprehensive definition of the word punishment.
Grotius, therefore, could say that Christ suffered the punishment of
our sins, as his sufferings were an example of what sin deserved.
5. The essence of the atonement, therefore, according to Gro-
(Socimis) partem omnem offensam esse poena; creditorem: atque in ea tale liabere jus, quale
alii creditores in rebus sibi debitis, quod jus saepe etiam dominii voce appellat: ideoque
saepissime repetit Deum hie spectandum, ut partem oft'ensam, ut creditorem, ut doininum,
tria hsec ponens tanquam tantundem valentia. Hie error Socini . . . per totam ipsius
tractationeni difFusus .... ipsius to npiaTov i/zeOfios [estj."
1 Ibid. II. [§ 1]; p. 305, b, 20-2i. 2 Jbid. v. [§ 11]; p. 317, b, 31-41.
i
§4.] GOVERNMENTAL THEORY. 675
tius consisted in this, that the sufferings and death of Christ were
designed as an exhibition of God's displeasure against sin. They
were intended to teach that in the estimation of God sin deserves
to be punished, and, therefore, that the impenitent cannot escape
the penalty due to their bffences. *' Nihil iniquitatis in eo est quod
Deus, cujus est summa potestas ad omnia per se non injusta, nulli
ipse legi obnoxius, cruciatibus et morte Christi uti voluit, ad statu-
endum exemplum grave adversus culpas immensas nostrum omni-
um, quibus Christus erat conjunctissimus, natura, regno vadimo-
nio."^ Again: "Hoc ipso Deus non tantum suum adversus
peccata odium testatum fecit, ac proinde nos hoc facto a peccatis
deterruit (facilis enim est collectio, si Deus ne resipiscentibus qui-
dem peccata remittere voluit, nisi Christo in poenas succedente,
multo minus inultos sinet contumaces) verum insigni modo insuper
patefecit summum erga nos amorem ac benevolentiam : quod ille
scilicet nobis pepercit, cui non erat dSta^opov, indifferens, punire
peccata, sed qui tanti id faciebat, ut potius quam impunita omnino
dimitteret, Filium suum unigenitum ob ilia peccata, poenis tradide-
rit." ^ It thus appears that, according to this theory, the work of
Christ was purely didactic. It was designed to teach, by way of an
example, God's hatred of sin. The cross was but a symbol.
Remonstrants.
The Synod of Dort met two years after the publication of the
work in which this theory was propounded. Grotius joined those
who remonstrated against the decisions of that Synod, and who on
that account were called Remonstrants. The Remonstrant theo-
logians, however, did not as a class adhere to Grotius's peculiar
doctrine. They did not regard the work of Christ as a govern-
mental transaction, but adhered to the Scriptural mode of repre-
sentation. They spoke of his death as a sacrifice and ransom.
They rejected indeed the Church doctrine. They denied that
what Christ did was a satisfaction of justice ; that He bore the pen-
alty of the law ; that He acted as our substitute, fulfilling in our
place all the demands of the law. As these ideas have no part,
according to their view, in the doctrine of sacrifices for sin, so they
have no place in the true doctrine concerning the work of Christ.
Under the Old Testament a sacrifice was not an equivalent for the
penalty incurred ; it was not a satisfaction to justice ; the victim
did not do what the offerer ought to have done. It was simply a
1 Grotius, De Satisfactime, iv. [§ 18] ; vol. iii. p. 315, b. 9-14.
2 Jbid. V. [§ 8] ; p. 317, a, 12-24.
576 PART III. Ch. IX. — THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
divine ordinance. God saw fit to ordain that the offering a sacri-
fice shonkl be the condition of the pardon of the violations of the
ceremonial law. So also He has seen fit to ordain that the sacri-
ficial death of Christ should be the condition of the pardon of sin
under the gospel. Even a ransom is no proper equivalent. The
holder of a captive may take what he pleases as the condition of
deliverance. On this point Limborch says : " In eo errant quam
maxime, quod velint redemtionis pretium per omnia sequivalens esse
debere miserise illi, e qua redemtio fit, redemtionis pretium enim
constitui solet pro libera sestimatione illius, qui captivum detinet,
non autem pro captivi merito. Ita pretium, quod Christus persol-
vit, juxta Dei patris gestimationem persolutum est." ^ This is the
old Scholastic doctrine of " acceptatio ; " a thing avails, irrespect-
ive of its inherent value, for Avhat God sees fit to take it. The
death of Christ was no more a satisfaction for sin, than that of bulls
and of goats under the old dispensation. God saw fit to make the
latter the condition of the pardon of violations of the ceremonial
law ; and He has seen fit to make the former the condition of the
pardon of sins against the moral law.
The Supernaturalists.
Although the Remonstrants as a body did not accept of the
governmental theory as proposed by Grotius, his main idea was
frequently reproduced by subsequent writers. This was done
especially by the Supernaturalists in Germany in their endeavours
to save something from the destructive princi])les of the Rational-
ists. They conceded that the work of Christ was not strictly a
satisfaction to justice. They taught that it Avas necessary as an
example and a symbol.^ It was designed as a manifestation of
God's displeasure against sin ; and, therefore, necessaiy to render
its formveness consistent with the interests of God's moral govern-
ment. This is true of Staudlin, Flatt, and even of Storr. Speak-
ing of the first of these writers, Baur says, " It was admitted that
in the New Testament doctrine concerning the death of Jesus the
Old Testament idea of a sin offering as a substitute and satisfaction
1 Limborch, Theologia Christiana, iii. xxi. 8, edit. Amsterdam, 1715, p. 262, a.
2 The word "symbol," however, is used in two senses. Sometimes it is synonymous
■with sign. Thus it is common to say that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are the
symbols of Christ's bodj' and blood. At other times, a symbol is that which expresses
the analog)' between the outward and inward. Thus, in one view, the atoning death of
Christ is symbolical of God's feelings towards sinners. In another view, the struggles and
triumph of our Lord in conflict with physical evil are symbolical of the believer's struggles
and triumph in the conflict with sin. The former was an illustration of the latter, and
intended to encourage the people of God with the assurance of success.
§4.] GOVERNMENTAL THEORY. 577
was actually contained, and therefore that the Church doctrine ol
satisfaction agreed with the literal sense of the Scriptures ; yet it
was insisted upon that this literal doctrine of the Bible involved
difficulties affecting our moral nature, and was evil in its practical
effects, and inconsistent with what the Scriptures themselves else-
where taught of guilt, merit, imputation, and of God's justice."
Hence, he goes on to say, that to escape from this dilemma it was
taught that when in the New Testament it is said " that Jesus
suffered punishment in the place of men, and procured for them
the forgiveness of sin, this can only mean that God, through the
death of Christ and the sufferings therewith connected, declared
himself to be the righteous judge of all evil." ^
C. Ch. Flatt endeavoured to find " a middle way between the
course of those who introduced into the Scriptures their own phi-
losophical opinions, or the philosophy of the age in which they
lived, and the strict grammatical, historical interpretation of those
who insisted on taking the words of Scripture either in their etymo-
logical sense, or in that sense in which it can be historically proved
that at least a part of the contemporaries of the sacred writers
understood them, or which stupid Rabbinical literalists attached to
certain phrases without regard to the fact how often the meanino-
of words, without a change of form, through higher culture and
refinement of moral feeling, is spiritualized and ennobled." ^ This
middle way, according to Flatt, leads to the conclusion that the
main design of Christ's death as viewed by Himself was effectually
to correct the false ideas of the Jews concernino- the Messiah's
kingdom as one of earthly splendor, and to open the way for the
entrance of his doctrine which taught that blessedness is to be
secured by moral excellence. This doctrine of Flatt agrees with
the governmental theory so for as it denies the Church doctrine of
a satisfaction to justice, and makes the design of Christ's death
purely didactic.
Storr, in all his works, and especially in his " Commentary on
the Epistle to the Hebrews," and his dissertation on the design of
Christ's death, makes the Scriptures his authoritative guide, and
therefore approaches mucli nearer to the Church doctrine than
perhaps any German theologian of his generation. He assumes
that Christ as man was bound to render the same obedience to the
divine law as is due from all other men. But in virtue of the
union of his human with the divine nature He as man was entitled
1 Lehre von der Versohnung, Tubingen, 1838, pp. 597, 598.
2 Von der Vemohnunr/, Zvveiter- Tlieil, Stuttgart, 17.)8, Vorrede, p. xxxii.
VOL. II. 37
578 PART III. Ch. IX. —theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
to all the exaltation and blessedness of which humanity is capable.
Any reward, therefore, for his perfect obedience, and especially
for his death on the cross, must be some benefit granted to others
for his sake. The salvation of his people, therefore, is the Re-
deemer's reward. Such benefit, however, could not consistently
be bestowed on sinners unless the death of "Christ liad been a
vindication of the righteousness of God by being intended as an
" example of punishment ; " a manifestation of God's hatred of sin
and of his determination to punish it.^
American TJieologians.
The governmental theory of the atonement seems to have had
an entirely independent origin in this country. It was the neces-
sary consequence of the principle that all virtue consists in benevo-
lence. If that principle be correct, all the moral attributes of God
are modifications of benevolence. There is no such perfection in
God as justice other than the purpose and disposition to promote
happiness. The death of Christ, therefore, could have no other
design than to render the forgiveness of sin consistent with the best
interests of the moral government of God. Tliis theory was elab-
orated by the younger President Edwards, presented in full in Dr.
Beman's work on the Atonement, and adopted by that numerous
and highly influential class of American theologians who embraced
the principle on which the theory, as held in this country, is
founded. In the work of Dr. E. A. Park, of Andover, on the
Atonement, there is a collection of discourses from the pens of the
most distinguished teachers of this doctrine. In the introduction
to that volume Professor Park gives an interesting histoiy of the
development of this view of the atonement as held in this country.
Objections to the Theory.
1. The first and most obvious objection to this theory is that it
is founded on an erroneous idea of the nature of punishment. It
assumes that the special design of punishment is the good of society.
If the best interests of a community, cither human or divine, a com-
monwealth of men or the moral government of God, can be secured
without the punishment of crime, then no such punishment ought
to be inflicted. But suffering inflicted for the good of others is not
punishment any more than suffering inflicted for the good of the
sufferer. The amputation of a crushed limb is not of the nature
1 G. Ch. Storr, Pauli Brief au die Hebraer. Zweiler Theil, iiber den eigentlichen Zweck des
Todes Jesn. Tubingen, 1789.
§4.] GOVERNMENTAL THEORY. 579
of punisliment ; neither are the sufferings of martyrs, although
intended to redound to the good of the Church and of the world.
The sufferings of Paul, which were so abundant and so constant,
although so fruitful of good, were not penal. And the sufferings of
Christ, if incurred in the discharge of his mission of mercy, and not
judicially inflicted in execution of the penalty of the law, had no
more tendency to show God's abhorrence of sin than the sufferings
of the martyrs.
No evil is of the nature of punishment unless it be inflicted in
satisfiiction of justice and in execution of the penalty of law. A
writer in the " British Quarterly Review " for October, 1866,
says: "There is a story of an English judge who once said to a
criminal, ' You are transported not because you have stolen these
goods, but that goods may not be stolen.' " The reviewer tiien
adds, " No principle more false in itself or more ruinous to pubHc
morality was ever announced from the English bench. The whole
moral effect of punishment lies in its being just. The man who
suffers for the benefit of others is a martyr and not a convict." It
is on this false principle that the whole governmental theory of the
atonement is founded. It admits of no ground of punishment but
the benefit of others. And if that benefit can be otherwise se-
cured all necessity for punishment ceases, and all objection to the
dispensing of pardon is removed. If the fundamental principle of
a theory be false, tlie theory itself must be unsound.
2. The theory conti'adicts the intuitive moral judgments of men.
The testimony of every man's conscience in view of his own sins
is that he deserves to be punished, not for the good of others, but
for his own demerit. If not guilty he cannot justly be punished ;
and if guilty he cannot justly be pardoned without satisfaction to
justice. As this is the testimony of conscience with regard to our
own sins, it is the testimony of the consciousness of all men with
regard to the sins of others. When a o-reat crime is committed,
the instinctive judgment of men is that the perpetrators ought to
be punished. No analysis of human consciousness can resolve this
sentiment of justice into a conviction of the understanding that the
interests of society demand tiie punishment of crime. That indeed
is true. It is one of the incidental benefits, but not the special
design or end of punishment. Indeed, the whole moral effect of
punishment depends upon the assumption tliat it is inflicted on the
ground of ill desert, and not for the public good. If the latter ob-
ject be made prominent, punishment loses its nature and of course
its appropriate moral effect. A theory which ignores these intui-
580 PART III. Ch. IX. — theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
tive convictions of the mind is not suited to our state, and never
can satisfy the conscience. We know that we deserve to be pun-
ished. We know that we ought to be pimished, and therefore
that punishment is inevitable under the government of a just God.
If it is not borne by a substitute in our stead, it must be borne by
ourselves. Where tjiere is no expiation for sin there is inevitably
a fearful looking for of judgment.
3. All the arguments heretofore urged in proof that the justice
of God cannot be resolved into benevolence are valid arguments
against the governmental theory of the atonement. The doctrine
that happiness is the highest good, and that all virtue consists in
the desire and purpose to promote the greatest possible amount of
happiness, is almost discarded from the schools, and should be dis-
carded from theology where it has wrought so much evil. It
is so inconsistent with our moral nature, to assert that there is
no difference between right and wrong except that between the
expedient and the inexpedient, that the doctrine could never have
been adopted except as a means of solving difficulties for the un-
derstanding, at the expense of the conscience. This point has
been already considered when treating of the attributes of God
and of the design of creation ; and therefore it need not be further
discussed in this place.
4. A fourth argument against the governmental theory is that it
is unscriptural. The Bible constantly represents Christ as a priest,
as a sacrifice, as a propitiation, as an expiation, as the substitute
and representative of sinners ; as assuming their place and sus-
taining the curse or penalty of the law in their stead. All these
representations are either ignored or explained away by the advo-
cates of this theory. Governments, civil commonwealths, from
which the principles and illustrations of this theory are derived,
know nothing of priests, sacrifices, and vicarious punishments.
And, therefore, these ideas do not enter, and cannot be admitted
into the governmental theory. But these ideas are the vital ele-
ments of the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement ; so that if we
renounce them we renounce the doctrine itself, or at least seriously
impair its integrity and power. Whole volumes on the atonement
have been written in which the woi*ds priest, sacrifice, and pro-
pitiation hardly occur.
5. This theory, as well as the moral view of the atonement, is
false, because defective. As it is true that the work of Christ is
designed and adapted to exert the most powerful moral influence
on sinners to induce them to return to God, so it is true that
§5.] THE MYSTICAL THEORY. 581
his work was designed and adapted to produce the strongest possi-
ble impression on the minds of all intelligent creatures of the evil
of sin, and thus restrain them from the commission of it, but nei-
ther the one nor the other was its primary design. It has this
moral impression on the sinner and upon the intelh'gent universe,
because it was a satisfaction to the justice of God, and the strongest
of all proofs that sin cannot be pardoned without an expiation, or
adequate atonement.
§ 5. The Mystical Theory.
The fourth theory on this subject is the mystical. This agrees
with the moral view (under which it might be included), in that
it represents the design of Christ's work to be the production of a
subjective effect in the sinner. It produces a change in him. It
"overcomes the evil of his nature and restores him to a state of holi-
ness. The two systems differ, however, as to the means by which
this inward change is accomplished. According to the one it is by
moral power operating according to the laws of mind by the ex-
hibition of truth and the exercise of moral influence. According
to the other it is by the mysterious union of God and man, of the
divine with the human nature, i. «., of divinity with humanity,
brought about by the incarnation.
This general idea is presented in various forms. Sometimes the
writers quoted in favour of this mystical view teach nothing more
than what has ever been held in the Church, and what is clearly
taught in the Scriptures. It is true that there is a moral and
spiritual union between God and man effected by the incarnation
of the Son of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He and
his people are one. Our Lord prays to the Father, John xvii.
22, 23, tiiat those given to Him " may be one, even as we are
one : I in them, and thou in me." And the Apostle Peter does
not hesitate to say tliat we are made " partakers of the divine na-
ture." This, and no more than tiiis, is necessarily implied in the
oft-quoted language of Athanasius in reference to Christ, auro?
ivr]i'6pu)7rr](Te\', li/a rjixeli O^oTTOL-qOui^iv. But besides this Scriptural doc-
trine there has prevailed a mystical view of the union of God
and man to which the redemption of our race is ascribed, and in
which, by some of its advocates, it is made exclusively to consist.
So far as the fathers are concerned, a clear distinction was made
between redemption and reconciliation ; between the objective
work of Christ in delivering us from the curse of the law and from
the power of Satan, and the subjective application of that work.
582 PART m. Ch. IX. — theories of the atonement.
Both were ascribed to Christ. The former (our redemption), was
effected by his bearing our sins, by his being made a curse for us,
by his giving Himself as a ransom, and by his obedience being
taken as a substitute for tlie obedience which we had failed to ren-
der. Our reconciliation with God, including restoration to his
image and fellowship, was effected, not, as the Church has ever
taught, by the work of the Holy Spirit, but according to the mys-
tical theory, by the union of the divine nature with our fallen
nature, brought about by the incarnation. In all ages of the
Church there have been minds disinclined to rest in the simple
statements of the Bible, and disposed to strive after something
more philosophical and profound. Among the early fathers, Miin-
scher says, there was an obscure and peculiar notion that in some
way the coming of Clu'ist had produced b. physical effect upon our
race to ennoble it and render it immortal.^ At times this idea is
advanced in general terms and without any attempt to explain
philosophically how this effect was produced. As Adam was the
cause of the seeds of death and corruption being introduced into
liuman nature, so Christ was the means of introducing a principle
of life and innnortality which operates as leaven in a mass of
dough. Or, as any affection of one member of the body, especially
of the head, affects the whole system, so the resurrection of Christ
and his life has a physical effect upon the whole mass of mankind.
They regarded the human race as one mass which, inasmuch as
Christ had united Himself with it by his incarnation, was restored
to its original j)erfection and made immortal.- This idea was more
perfectly worked out by the realists. They held humanity to
be a generic substance and life, of which individual men are the
modes of existence ; and they also held that it was this generic
humanity, and not merely a true body and a reasonable soul that
Christ assumed into personal union with his divine nature'; thus
an element of divinity was introduced into humanity, by which it
is restored and ennobled, and according to some, finally deified.
Among the Platonizing fathers, however, the mystical operation
of the incarnatit)n was connected with their doctrine of the Logos.
What the real doctrine of the fathers and of Philo their j)redeces-
sor and master in this matter concerning the Logos was, has ever
been a matter of dispute among the learned. It is not at all even
yet a settled matter whether Philo regarded the Logos as a person
1 Bof/mengeschichie, ii., vi. § 122, 2d edit. Marburg, 1818, vol. iv. p. 285.
2 Gieseler's Kirchenijeschichte iv. in. ii. 5, § 97, edit. Bonn, 1855; vol. vi. p. 384. Miin
scher's Dogmengeschichte , vol. iv. p. 286.
§5.] THE MYSTICAL THEORY. 583
or not. Dorner, one of the latest and most competent authorities
on this point, takes the negative side of the question. According to
him Philo taught that the Logos was (1.) A faculty of God, the
vovs or understanding, and also the power of God. The two are
united ; thought and power. (2.) The Logos is the activity of
God ; not merely the power of thought and of creating, but also
the actual activity of God in thinking and creating. God first
created by thinking an ideal world, after which the actual world
was to be fashioned. As a builder forms in his mind the plan of a
city in all its details, before he carries that plan into execution ;
and as the dwelling-place of that ideal city is the understanding of
the builder, so the ideal world is in the mind of God, i. g., in the
Logos. (3.) According to Phllo the Logos is not only the think-
ing principle which forms this ideal world, but the ideal world
itself. (4.) This plenitude of ideas which constitutes the ideal
world is the reality, life, and intelligence of the actual world. The
latter is (or becomes) by the union of the ideal with matter, what
it is. The /coo-/xo9 vorjro^ is realized in the koct/xos ala-O-qro';. The
Logos, therefore (or the divine intelligence and activity), is the
life and intelligence of the actual world. He is the reason in all
rational creatures, ancrels and men.^ According to Philo the Lofjos
was on the one hand identical with God, and on the other identical
with the world as its interior reality and life.
Li the hands of the Platonizing fathers this doctrine was only
modified. Some of them, as Origen,held that the Logos was a per-
son eternally begotten of the Father ; according to Clemens Alex-
andrinus, He was, as the Logos eVSta6'ero?, eternally in God as his
wisdom, and therefore impersonal ; but as the Logos irpocpopLKo?, or
united to the world as its formative principle, He became a person.
In applying these philosophical speculations to the explanation of
the doctrine concerning the person and work of Christ, there is no
little diversity among these writers, so far as the details are con-
cerned. In substance they agree. The eternal Logos or Son,
became truly a man, and as such gave Himself as a sacrifice and
ransom for the redemption of men. He also by his incarnation
secures our recovery from the power of sin and restoration to the
image and fellowship of God. How this latter object is accom-
plished is the mystical part of the theory. The Logos is the eter-
nal Son of God ; but He is also the interior life and substance of
the world. Rational creatures included in the world, are endowed
1 See Do- ler's Entwicklunffsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. 2d Edition.
Stuttgart, 1845. Introduction, pp. 26-12.
584 PART III. Ch. IX. — theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
with personality and freedom. Some of them, both angels and
men, have turned away from the Logos which is their life. A
renewed union of the divine with the human restores them to their
normal relation. The original creation of man was imperfect.
The divine element was not strong enough to secure a right de-
velopment, hence evil occurred. A larger infusion of the divine
element corrects the evil, and secures the restoration ultimately,
according to Origen, of all rational creatures to holiness and God.
The Logos is the Mediator, the High-Priest between God and
man (or rather God and the world). One with God, He is also
one with the world. He unites the two, and they become one.
The system has a pantheistic aspect, although it admits the free-
dom of rational creatures, and the separate existence, or an exist-
ence as self of the world. The M'hole universe, however, God and
world, is one vast organism in which God is the only life and
the only reason, and this life and reason are the Logos. And it is
by giving the Logos, the rational or spiritual element, renewed
power, that the world of rational creatures, who in the abuse of
their freedom have turned away from God, are brought back not
only to a real or substantial, but also to a cordial union with God,
so that He becomes all in all.
In the beginning of the ninth century John Scotus Erigena
anticipated most of the results of the highest modern speculation.
Sclielling and Hegel had him for a predecessor and guide. With
him " Creator et creatura unum est. Deus est omnia, et omnia
Deus." The creation is necessary and eternal ; the incarnation is
necessary and eternal ; and redemption is necessary and eternal.
All is process. An eternal unfolding of the infinite in the finite,
and return of the finite into the infinite. Erigena, from his place
in history and his relation to the Church, was forced to clothe his
philosophy as much as possible with the drapery of Christianity ;
this secured for him an influence which continued long after his
death over later speculative theologians.
During the Middle Ages there was a succession of advocates of
the mystical theory. Some of them following Erigena adopted a
system essentially pantheistic ; others were theistic. The one class
strove to reduce Christianity into a system of philosophy. They
adopted the principle of Erigena, " Conficitur inde, veram esse
philosophiam veram religionem, conversimqne, veram religionem
esse veram philosophiam." The two sources of knowledge are
recta ratio and vera aucforitas. Both are divine as coming from
God. Reason, however, as first, is the higher, and nothing is to
§5.] THE MYSTICAL THEORY. 585
be admitted as true whicli reason does not authenticate.^ The
other class strove after fellowsliip with God, Both assumed that
what Miinscher and Gieseler call the physical union of the divine
and human natures, was the normal and ultimate state of man.
Whether this identity of the two was effected by a perfect devel-
opment of God in man and nature ; or by the elevation of the
human until it is lost in the divine, the result Is the same. Man is
deified. And therein is his salvation. And so far as Christ was
recognized as a Saviour at all, it was as the bond of itnion between
the two, or the channel through which the divine flows into the
human. The incarnation itself, the union of the divine and human
natures, was the great saving act. Christ redeems us by what He
is, not by what He does. The race, say some, the consummated
Church, say others, is the God-man, or God manifest in the flesh.
Almost all this class of writers held that the incarnation would
have been necessary, had man never sinned. The necessity arises
out of the nature of God and his relation to the world, and out of
the nature and destiny of man.
Mystical Theory at the Time of the Reformation.
At the time of the Reformation the same mode of apprehending
and presenting Christianity was adopted. While the Reformers
held to the great objective trutl>3 of the Bible, to a historical
Christ, to the reality and necessity of his obedience and satisfaction
as something done for us and in our place, i. e., to an objective re-
demption and justification, a class of writers soon appeared who
insisted on what they called the Christ within us, and merged the
objective work of Christ into a subjective operation in the souls of
his people ; or at least subordinated the former entirely to the
latter. A work, entitled "Die Deutsche Theologie " (German
Theology), was published during the lifetime of Luther, which
contained a great amount of important truth, and to which the
illustrious reformer acknowledged himself greatly indebted. In
that book, however, the mystical element was carried to a danger-
ous extreme. While the historical facts respecting Christ and his
redeeming work were allowed to remain, little stress was laid upon
them. The real value of the blessings receiv^ed from Christ, was
the change effected in the soul itself; and that change was not
referred to the work of the Holy Spirit, so much as to the union
of the divine nature with our nature, in virtue of the incarnation.
The book teaches that if it were possible for a man to be as pure
1 De Divisione Naturae, i. 56, 66, 69.
583 TART III. Ch. IX. — theories OF THE ATONEMENT.
and obedient as Christ, lie would become, throuirb si'ace, what
Christ was by nature. Through this obedience he would become
one with God. Christ is not merely objective, isolated in his
majesty, but we are all called that God should be incarnate in us,
or that we should become God.
Osiander.
Osiander and Schwenkfeld, two contemporaries of Luther, were
both advocates, although in different forms, of the same theory.
Men are saved by the substantial union of the divine nature with
the nature of man. According to Osiander justification is not by
the imputation, but by the infusion of righteousness. And the
righteousness infused is not the righteousness of Christ wrought
out here on earth. What Christ did centuries ago cannot make
us righteous. What we receive is his divine nature. This is the
specific doctrine for which Osiander was denounced in the Form
of Concord. Man, according to him, was originally created not
after the image of God as such, nor of the Son as such, but of the
Son as He was to become man. Manhood was eternally included
in the idea and nature of the Son of God. His incarnation was,
therefore, due to his nature, and not to the accident of man's sin-
ning. The idea of the incarnation is eternal, and in reference to
it the whole universe was created and all things consist. Christ's
human nature is only the vehicle for conveying to us his divine
nature. In the vine, he says, there are two natures, the one is the
nature of the wood, which it retains, even if it should be withered
up ; the other is "plane occulta, fructifera et vinifera natura." And
as the clusters of grapes could not have the vinous nature, unless
they were wood of the wood of the vine ; so neither can we partake
of the divine nature of Christ, unless we, by faith and baptism, are
so incorporated with Him, as to be flesh of his flesh and bone of
his bone. But the human nature of Cluist, without the divine (si
sine Deo esset), would be of no avail.^
Schwenkfeld.
While Osiander makes the divine nature of Christ as communi-
cated to us our righteousness and life, and regards his hvunanity as
only the means of communication, Schwenkfeld exalts the human
into the divine, and regards this divine human nature as the source
of life tons. He agreed with Osiander in making justification sub-
jective, by the infusion of righteousness ; and also in teaching that
1 Confession, p. 144, p. 88 ( ? ).
§5.] THE MYSTICAL THEORY. 587
the righteousness which is infused is the righteousness of Christ ;
but instead of depreciating the human nature and making it only
the channel for communicating the divine, he laid special stress on
the humanity of Christ. The human nature of Christ was not a
creature. It was formed out of the substance of God ; and after
its sojourn on earth, was even as to the body, rendered completely
or perfectly divine, so that whatever can be predicated of God, can
be predicated of the humanit}' of Christ. Nevertheless, the human
nature was not so absorbed into the divinity, that Christ had but
one nature. He continues God and man, but as man is God.
And this divine human, or human divine nature, is communicated
to us by faith. Faith itself is the first communication of the divine
essence, the final result of which is the complete deification of man.
The substance of God is not communicated to the race of men, so
that God becomes thus identified with men in general. It is in
the regenerated that this union of the divine and human natures is
consummated. It cannot escape notice, that the views of this class
of writers, so far as results are concerned, difi^er but little from
those of the modern speculative theologians of Germany and their
followers in England and America. The obvious objection, that
if salvation depends on the union of the divine nature with ours,
and if this union be due to the incarnation of Christ, those living
before his advent in the flesh must be excluded from the benefits
of his theanthropic nature, is very unsatisfactorily answered by the
modern theologians referred to. Schwenkfeld had no hesitation
in cutting the knot. In a Sendbrief written in 1532, in which
he treats of the difference between the Old and New Testament
economies, he says, that under the former there was no saving
faith, and no justification, and that all the patriarchs had therefore
perished foi'ever.
Schwenkfeld's followers were numerous enough to form a dis-
tinct sect, which continues to this day. Some religionists, both in
Germany and in this country, are still called by his name. All the
writers on the history of doctrine give the authorities for the state-
ments concerning the doctrines of Osiander and Schwenkfeld
derived from sources not generally accessible in this country.
Oetinger.
The prominent representative of the mystical theory during
the eighteenth century, was Friedrich Christopher Oetinger, a
distinguished theologian of South Germany. He was born in
1702, and died in 1782. He enjoyed every advantage of culture
588 PART III. Cn. IX. — THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
in science, theology, and philosophy, which he diligently improved.
After his death it was said, " When Oetinger died a whole acad-
emy of science died." Very early in life, he says, lie adopted and
avowed the purpose, " to understand whatever he learnt." By
this he meant that he would receive nothing on authority. All
that the Scriptures teach as doctrine, must be sublimated into
truths of the reason and received as such. He avowed it to be
his purpose to furnish a philosophia sacra as a substitute for the
systems of profane philosophy. For this purpose he devoted him-
self to the study of all previously received systems, extending his
researches to the cabala of the Jews, and the mystical writers
of the Church ; to alchemy and to all departments of science
within his reach. He professed special reverence for Jacob
Bohme, the great unlettered theosophist of the preceding century,
to whom even Schelling and other of the leading modern philoso-
phers bow as to an acknowledged seer. Oetinger examined the
several systems in vogue before or during his own period. Idealism
and materialism, and realistic dualism were alike unsatisfactory.
He assumed life to be the primordial principle. Life was the
aggregate of all forces. These in God are united by a bond of
necessity. In things out of God the union of these forces is not
necessary ; and hence evil may arise, and has, in fact, arisen. To
remove this evil and bring all tlifngs back to God, the eternal
Logos became man. He adopted the old Platonic idea, that in
the Logos were the originales rerum antequarn exstiterunt formae :
omnia constiterunt in ipso archetypice sive actu. This plenitude of
the Godhead dwells in Christ and renders his humanity divine.
The union of the divine and human natures in Christ, secures the
complete deification of his human nature. The hypostatical union
of the two natures in Christ is the norm of the mystical union be-
tween Christ and his people. "Ut ibi adsumta caro consistit ev Xoyw
per participationem uTroo-Tao-cws, ita hie nostra subsistit in Christo per
consortium gratias et ^ei'as e^vVew?," etc.^ The second Adam having
assumed humanity, says Oetinger, "Traxit carnem nostram in pleni-
tudinem Deitatis," so that our race again becomes possessed of the
divine nature in Him and in us ; i. g., " unione turn personali tum
mystica."^ It is indeed plain, as Dorner says, that we find in Oetin-
ger the ideas which are the foundation of the philosophy of the pres-
ent age. The nature of God and the nature of man are so homoge-
neous that they may be united and constitute one, which is rlivine
human or human divine. We are saved not by the work of Christ
1 See Dorner, Person Christi, 1st edit. Stuttgart, 1839, pp. 305-322. 2 /bid, p. 317.
§6.] . CONCLUDING REMARKS. 589
for us, but by his work in us. The eternal Son is incarnate not
in the man Christ Jesus, but in the Church.
The Modern Views.
In the present period of the Church's history, this mystical
theory of the person and work of Christ is probably more preva-
lent tlian ever before. The whole school of German speculative
theologians, with their followers in England and America, are on
this ground. Of these theologians there are, as remarked above,
two classes, the pantheistic and the theistic. According to the
former, the nature of man at first was an imperfect manifestation
of the absolute Being, and in the development of the race this
manifestation is rendered complete ; but complete only as an
eternal progress. According to the other, man has an existence
and personality? in one sense, outside of God. Nevertheless God
and man are substantially the same. This identity or sameness is
shown perfectly in Christ, and through Him, is realized more and
more perfectly in the Church as some teach, or, as others say, in
the whole race.^
§ 6. Concluding HemarJcs.
In reviewing these several theories concerning the method of
salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, it is important to re-
mark, —
1. That it is not to be inferred because certain writers are
quoted as setting forth one particular theory, that they recognized
the truth of no other view of the work of Christ. This remark is
/especially applicable to the patristic period. While some of the fa-
'thers speak at times of Christ's saving the world as a teacher, and
others of them say tliat He gave himself as a ransom to Satan, and
others again that He brings men back to the image of God, this
does not prove that they ignored the fact that he was a sin offer-
ing, making expiation for the guilt of the world. It is character-
istic of the early period of the Church, before special doctrines had
become matters of controversy, that the people and the theologians
retain the common language and representations of the Bible ;
while the latter, especially, dwell sometimes disproportionately on
one mode of Scriptural representation, and sometimes dispropor-
tionately on another. The fathers constantly speak of Christ as a
priest, as a sacrifice, and as a ransom. They ascribe our salvation
to his blood and to his cross. The ideas of expiation and propitia-
1 On these views see above the chapters on the Person and Work of Christ.
590 PART m. Cii. IX. — THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT.
tion were wrought into all the services of the early Church. These
Scriptural ideas sustained the life of the people of God entirely
independently of the speculations of philosophical theologians.
2. The second remark which the preceding survey suggests is,
that the theories antagonistic to the common Church doctrine are
purely philosophical. Origen assumed that in man there are the
three constituent principles : body, soul, and spirit ; and that in
analogy therewith, there are three senses of Scripture, — the his-
torical, the moral, and the spiritual. The first is the plain mean-
ing of the words which suggests itself to any ordinary, intelligent
reader ; the second is the allegorical application of the historical
sense for moral instruction. For example, what Moses commands
about not muzzling an ox which treads out the corn, may be un-
derstood as teaching the general principle that labour should be
rewarded, and, therefore, may be applied as it is by the Apostle,
to enforce the duty of supporting ministers of the Gospel. The
third or spiritual sense, is the general philosophical truth, which is
assumed to underlie the doctrines of the Scriptures ; of which
truths the Scriptural doctrines are only the temporary .forms.
Thus Origen made the Bible teach Platonism. The object of
most of the early apologists, was to show that Christianity had a
philosophy as well as heathenism ; and that the philo.sophy of the
former is identical with the philosophy of the latter so far as that
of the latter can prove itself to be true. The trouble was, and
always has been, that whatever philosophy was assumed to be true,
the doctrines of Scripture were made to conform to it or were
sublimated into it. The historical and moral senses of Scripture
constitute the object of faith ; the spiritual sense is the object of
gnosis or knowledge. The former is very well in its place and for
the people ; but the latter is something of a higher order to which
only the philosophically cultivated can attain. That the mystical
theory of the person and work of Christ, especially, is the product
of philosophical speculation is obvious — (1.) From the express
avowals of its most distinguished advocates. (2.) From the
nature of the theory itself, which reveals itself as a philosophy,
i. e., as a speculative doctrine concerning the nature of being, the
nature of God, the nature of man, and of the relation of God to
the world, etc. (3.) From the fact that it has changed with the
varying systems of philosophy. So long as Platonism was in
vogue, the spiritual sense of Scripture was assumed to be Pla-
tonism ; that system discarded, the schoolmen adopted the philoso-
phy of Aristotle, and then the Bible taught the doctrines of
§ 6.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 591
Peripateticism. Those of them who followed Scotus Erigena
found Pantheism in the Scriptures. When the philosophy of
Leibnitz and Wolf dominated the schools, that philosophy deter-
mined the form of all Scriptural doctrine. And since the rise of
the new speculative philosophy all that the Scriptures teach is
cast in its forms of thought. No man can be so blind as not to
see that all that is peculiar in what the modern theology teaches
of the person and work of Christ, is nothing more nor less than
the application of modern speculative philosophy to the doctrines
of the Bible. This, indeed, is generally admitted and avowed.
This being the case, all these speculations are without authority.
They form no part of the truth as it is revealed as the object of
faith. We are bound to understand the Scriptures in their plain
historical sense ; and to admit no philosophy to explain or modify
that sense, except the philosophy of the Bible itself; that is, those
facts and principles concerning the natui*e of God, the nature of
man, of the world, and of the relation between God and the
world, which are either asserted or plainly assumed in the Scrip-
tures. To depart from this principle is to give up the Bible as a
rule of faith ; and to substitute for it the teachings of philosophy.
That form of Rationalism which consists in giving a philosophical
explanation of the truths of revelation, or in resolving them into
truths of the reason, is just as certain in the end to teach for doc-
trines the speculations of men, as the most avowed skepticism.
After all, apart from the Bible, the best antidote to all these
false theories of the person and work of Christ, is such a book as
Doctor Schaff's " Christ in Song." ^ The hymns contained in that
volume are of all ages and from all churches. They set forth
Christ as truly God, as truly man, as one person, as the expiation
for our sins, as our intercessor, saviour, and king, as the supreme
object of love, as the ultimate ground of confidence, — as the all-
sufficient portion of the soul. We want no better theology and no
better religion than are set forth in these hymns. They were in-
dited by the Holy Spirit in the sense that the thoughts and feelings
which they express, are due to his operations on the hearts of his
people.
1 Chrisii in Fong. Hymns of Immanuel: selected from all Ages, with Notes, by Philip
Scbaff, D. D. New York, Anson D. F. Randolph and Co' , 1869.
CHAPTER X.
INTERCESSION OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Christ our Intercessor.
Under the old dispensation the High Priest, after having offered
sacrifices for sin in the outer court, was directed, on the day of
atonement, to take the blood of the victims and a censer with
burning incense, and to enter within the veil, and there present
the blood before God, sprinkling it upon the mercy seat. In like
mannei", as we are taught by the Apostle, Christ, having offered
Himself on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, has passed through
the heavens, there to appear before God in our behalf. He is,
therefore, said to be the minister of the true tabernacle, which the
Lord pitched and not man. His priestly office is now exercised in
heaven, where he ever lives to intercede for us.
This work of Christ is expressed in Scripture, —
1. By saying that He appears before God for us. Hebrews ix.
24. The word used is t/A^avto-^^mt = e/x(^avi^€tv eaurdi' rut. Christ
presents Himself before God as our representative. His perfect
manhood, his official character, and his finished work, plead for us
before the tlirone of God. All that the Son of God as incarnate
is, and all that He did on earth. He is, and did for us ; so that
God can regard us with all the favour which is due to Him. His
presence, therefore, is a perpetual ajid prevailing intercession with
God in behalf of his people, and secures for them all the benefits
of his redemption.
2. His intercession is expressed by saying that He draws near
to God on our behalf. The word used is ivrvyxdvcLv, to meet with^
to talk with. To meet, or approach one for (y^^^p^ another, is to
intercede in his behalf. (Romans viii. 34 ; Hebrews vii. 25.) To
meet one against (^KaTo.') another is to intercede against him. (Ro-
mans xi. 2.) According to the Scriptures, and speaking after the
manner of men, Christ speaks to God in our behalf; or, as -it is
expressed in John xvii. 9, He prays for us.
3. Clu-ist is called our Paraclete, irapdKXr)To<;. This word is
translated advocate in 1 John ii. 1, and comforter in John xiv. 16 ;
§ 2.] ITS NATURE. 593
XV. 26 ; xvi. 7. Neither translation expresses its full meaning.
It signifies invoked^ called upon for help. The Paraclete is, there-
fore, in the comprehensive sense of the word, a helper, whatever
may be the specific nature of the aid afforded. As, however, the
guilty, the ignorant, the friendless, when arraigned before a tri-
bunal of justice, need above all things an advocate ; one who will
undertake their cause ; present a plea in their behalf; and use all
his influence to secure their acquittal ; it is in this sense especially
that Christ is set forth as our Trapa.KX-qro';. He is our advocate. He
appears at the bar of God for us. He pleads our cause. He pre-
sents his work of obedience and suffering as the ground of our jus-
tification. He exerts his influence, the influence of his character
as the Son of God in whom the Father is ever well pleased, and
whom He heareth always, as well as the influence due to Him in
virtue of the covenant of redemption, and the perfect fulfilment of
its conditions, to secure for his people all the good they need. It
is, therefore, especially in passages which speak of justification, and
of judicial process, that Christ's intercession is brought into view.
(See Romans viii. 34 ; 1 John ii. 1.)
§ 2. Its Nature.
As to the nature of Christ's intercession, little can be said. There
is error in pressing the representations of Scripture too far ; and
there is error in explaining them away. This latter error is
chargeable on many of the later theologians, who teach that the
Scriptures intend, by the intercession of Christ, nothing more than
his continued intervention or agency in the salvation of his people.
Man}' of the Lutheran theologians, on the other extreme, err in
insisting that this intercession of our Lord in our behalf in heaven
is vocalis, verbalis, et oralis. Sounds and words suppose an atmos-
phere and a body, which is flesh and blood, which Paul says can-
not inherit the kingdom of God. The Reformed theoloo-ians
abstain from these extremes, and consider it enough to say that the
intercession of Christ includes — (1.) His appearing before God in
our behalf, as the sacrifice for our sins, as our High Priest, on the
ground of whose work we receive the remission of our sins, the
gift of the Holy Spirit, and all needed good. (2.) Defence against
the sentence of the law and the charges of Satan, who is the great
accuser. (8.) His offering Himself as our surety, not only that
the demands of justice shall be shown to be satisfied, but that his
people shall be obedient and faithful. (4.) The oblation of the
persons of the redeemed, sanctifying their prayers, and all their
VOL. II. 38
594 PART III. Ch. X. — intercession OF CHRIST.
services, rendering tliein acceptable to God, through the savour of
his own merits.
§ 3. Its Objects.
As to the objects of Christ's intercession, the Lutherans make a
distinction between his intercession as general and special. He
intercedes generally for all men, and specially for the elect. The
former is assumed on the authority of Luke xxiii. 34, where Christ
is represented as praying for his murderers, saying, " Father for-
give them ; for they know not what they do." It is said to be
due to the intercession of Christ that the wicked are not imme-
diately cut off, that they have the Gospel preached to them, and
every opportunity afforded them of returning unto God. That
there is, however, an intercession of which the people of Christ
alone are objects, Lutherans themselves are constrained to admit,
as our Lord Himself says : " I pray not for the world, but for
them which thou hast given me." (John xvii. 9, 20.) So far as
the intercession of Christ is part of his official work as the High
Priest of our profession. He intercedes only for those who accept
Him as their priest, and whom He represents in the covenant of
redemption. This follows from the nature of his office as Priest,
from his own express declaration, and from the fact that his inter-
cession is certainly efficacious. Him the Father heareth always.
If He interceded for all, all would certainly be saved.
§ 4. Intercession of Saints.
There is but one Mediator between God and man, and but one
High Priest through whom we draw near to God. And as in-
tercession is a priestly function, it follows that Christ is our only
intercessor. But as there is a sense in which all believers are
kings and priests unto God, which is consistent with Christ's being
our only king and priest ; so there is a sense in which one believer
may intercede for another, which is not inconsistent with Christ's
being our only intercessor. By intercession in the case of believers
is only meant that one child of God may pray for another or for all
men. To intercede is in this sense merely to pray for. But in
the case of Christ it expresses an official act, which none who does
not fill his office can perform. As under the old economy one
Israelite could pray for his brethren, but on\y the High Priest
could enter within the veil and officially interpose in behalf of the
people ; so now, although we may pray, one for another, Christ
only can appear as a priest before God in our behalf and plead his
§4.] INTERCESSION OF SAINTS. 595
merits as the ground on which his prayers for his people should be
answered.
Protestants object to the intercession of saints as taught and
practised in the Church of Rome.
1. Because it supposes a class of beings who do not exist ; that
is, of canonized departed spirits. It is only those who, with the
angels, have been officially declared by the Church, on account of
their merits, to be now in heaven, who are regarded as interces-
sors. This, however, is an unauthorized assumption on the part
of the Church. It has no prerogative to enable it thus to decide,
and to enroll whom it will among glorified spirits. Often those
thus dignified have been real enemies of God, and persecutors of
his people.
2. It leads to practical idolatry. Idolatry is the ascription of
divine attributes to a creature. In the popular mind the saints,
and especially the Virgin Mary, are regarded as omnipresent ; able
at all times and in all places, to hear the prayers addressed to
them, and to relieve the wants of their worshippers.
3. It is derogatory to Chi-ist. As He is the only and sufficient
mediator between God and man, and as He is ever willing to hear
and answer the prayers of his people, it supposes some deficiency
in Him, if we need other mediators to approach God in our be-
half.
4. It moreover is contrary to Scripture, inasmuch as the saints
are assumed to prevail with God on account of their personal
merits. Such merit no human being has before God. No man
has any merit to plead for his own salvation, much less for the sal-
vation of others.
5. The practice is superstitious and degrading. Superstition is
belief without evidence. Tiie practice of the invocation of saints
is fotmded on a belief which has no support from Scripture. It is
calling upon imaginary helpers. It degrades men by turning them
from the Creator to the creature, by leading them to put their trust
in an arm of flesh, instead of in the power of Chi'ist. It, there-
fore, turns away the hearts and confidence of the people from Him
to those who can neither hear nor save.
CHAPTER XI.
KINGLY OFFICE OF CHRIST.
§ 1. The Church Grod^s Kingdom.
God as the creator and preserver of the universe, and as infinite
in his being and perfections, is, in virtue of his nature, the absolute
sovereign of all his creatures. This sovereignty He exercises over
the material world by his wisdom and power, and over rational
beings as a moral ruler. From this rightful authority of God, our
race revolted, and thereby became a part of the kingdom of dark-
ness of which Satan is the head. To this kingdom the mass of
mankind has ever since belonged. But God, in his grace and
mercy, determined to deliver men from the consequences of their
apostasy. He not only announced the coming of a Redeemer who
should destroy the power of Satan, but He at once inaugurated an
antao-onistic kingdom, consisting of men chosen out of the world,
and through the renewing of the Holy Ghost restored to their alle-
giance. Until the time of Abraham this kingdom does not appear
to have had any visible organization apart from the families of the
people of God. Every pious household was a church of which the
parent was the priest.
To prevent the universal spread of idolatry, to preserve the
knowledge of the truth, to gather in his elect, and to prepai'e the
way for the coming of the promised Redeemer, God entered into
covenant with the father of the faithful and with his descendants
throuo-h Isaac, constitutino- them his visible kino;dom, and makinor
them the depositaries and guardians of his supernatural revelations.
In this covenant He promised eternal life upon condition of faith
in Him that was to come.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they were made a
theocracy so constituted in its officers, in its institutions, and in its
services, as not only to preserve alive the knowledge of God's pur-
pose and plan of salvation, but also to set forth the character,
offices, and work of the promised seed of Abraham in whom all
the nations of the earth were to be blessed.
§2.] CHRIST IS. TRULY A KING. 597
The kingdom of God, therefore, as consisting of those who ac-
knowledge, worship, love, and obey Jehovah as the only living and
true God, has existed in our world ever since the fall of Adam. It
has ever been the light and life of the world. It is the salt by which
it is preserved. It is the leaven by which it is ultimately to be
pervaded. To gather his people into this kingdom, and to carry it
on to its consummation, is the end of all God's dispensations, and
the purpose for which his eternal Son assumed our nature. He
was born to be a king. To this end He lived and died and rose
again, that He might be Lord of all those given to Him by the
Father.
§ 2. Christ is truly a King.
Although the kingdom of God had existed from the beginning,
yet as everything therewith connected before the Advent was
merely preparatory, the Scriptures constantly speak of the Mes-
siah as a king who was to set up a kingdom into which in the end
all other kingdoms were to be merged. The most familiar desig-
nation applied to Him in the Scriptures is Lord. But Lord means
proprietor and ruler; and when used of God or Christ, it means
absolute proprietor and sovereign ruler. Apart from Christ's right
in us and sovereignty over us as God, He as the God-man is our
Lord. We belong to Him by the purchase of his blood, and God
has set Him as King on his holy hill of Zion.
In the Book of Genesis the Messiah is set forth as the Shiloh to
whom is to be the gathering of the people. In reference to Him
it was said in Numbers xxiv. 17, " There shall come a Star out of
Jacob ; and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel.' In 2 Samuel vii.
16, we have the record of God's formal covenant with David,
" Thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever be-
fore thee : thy throne shall be established forever." In fulfilment
of that promise Isaiah predicted that a virgin should bear a son and
call his name Immanuel, on whose shoulder should be the govern-
ment, whose name should be called " Wonderful, Counsellor, the
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of
the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,
upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and
to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth
even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."
(Isaiah ix. 6, 7.) In the second Psalm God declares in reference
to the Messiah, I have " set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
.... Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine in-
heritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
598 PART III. Ch. XI. — kingly OFFICE OF CHRIST.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them in
pieces hke a potter's vessel." The whole of the 45th, 72d, and
110th Psalms is devoted to the exhibition of the Messiah in his
character as king. In Daniel vii. 13, 14, it is said, " One like the
Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the
Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And
there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all
people, nations, and languages, should serve him ; his dominion is
an everlasting dominion, which shall not j)ass away, and his king-
dom that which shall not be destroyed." The prophet Micah v. 2,
said, " Thou, Bethlehem, Ephratah, though thou be little among
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto
me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from
of old, from everlasting." After the captivity the people were
cheered with the hope that the promised king was soon to appear.
" Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; shout, O daughter of Jeru-
salem ; Behold, thy King cometh unto thee ; he is just, and hav-
ing salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the
foal of an ass." (Zech. ix. 9.) This is the mode of representa-
tion which pervades the Old Testament Scriptures. As the priest-
hood, and sacrifices, and prophets of the former dispensation were
typical of the prophetic and priestly offices of Christ, so the kings
of Israel were typical of his kingly office, and so the national the-
ocracy of the Mosaic economy was typical of the spiritual theoc-
racy of the Messianic period.
In the New Testament Christ is set forth as a king, in harmony
with the predictions which foretold his advent. The Angel Gabriel,
in announcing to the Virgin Mary the approaching birth of the
Messiah said, " Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth
a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall
be called the Son of the Highest : and the Lord God shall give
unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over
the house of Jacob forever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no
end." (Luke i. 31-33.) John the Baptist, the forerunner of
Christ, prepared the people for iiis coming, saying, " Repent ye :
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. iii. 2.) And our
Lord himself, when He entered upon his personal ministry, went
everywhere preaching "the gospel of the kingdom of God."
(Mark i. 14.) Much of his teaching was devoted to setting forth
the nature of the kingdom which He came to establish.
Nothing, therefore, is more certain, according to the Scriptures,
than that Christ is a king ; and consequently, if we would retain
§3.] NATURE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 599
the truth concerning Hhii and liis work, He must be so regarded
in our theology and religion.
§ 3. Nature of Christ'' s Kingdom.
Although the kingdom of God on earth was set up immediately
after the fall, yet as the Messiah was to come to make all things
new, and to take into his hands as the Theanthropos the adminis-
tration of this kingdom, the Old Testament predicted, and the New
Testament announces, the establishment of a new kingdom as con-
sequent on his advent.
The word /3ao-iAeta is used in Scripture in three senses.
(1.) For royal authority or dominion ; such dominion as it is the
prerogative of a king to exercise. (2.) For those who are subject
to that authority. Among men any community, or commonwealth,
or territory subject to a king, constitutes his kingdom. And in
the New Testament, those who acknowledge Christ as their king
constitute his kingdom. (3.) The word is used metonymically for
the effects of the exercise of royal authority. It is to be understood
in the first of these senses in all those cases in which a kingdom or
dominion is said to be given to Christ ; or when we pray. Thy king-
dom come, or when it is said, Of his kingdom there is no end.
It is used in the second sense when men are said to enter into
the kingdom of Christ, or to be cast out of it, or when the char-
acter of those is described who are to constitute that kingdom.
And it is used in the third sense when men are said to inherit, to
see (or enjoy), to seek, and to value more than hid treasure, the
kingdom of God. Hence also the kingdom of God is said to con-
sist in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Such are
the eifects of the reign of Christ.
This kingdom is called the kingdom of Christ, or of the Son of
God, because administered by Him. The royal authority is vested
in Him. It is called the kingdom of God, because Christ is God,
and because it is the kingdom which God was to establish on earth
in distinction from the kingdoms of men. It is called the kingdom
of heaven, because its king dwells in lieaven, because it is spiritual
and heavenly, and because it is to be consummated in heaven.
Various as are the applications and uses of these designations in
the New Testament, they are included under the general idea of
the Messianic kingdom ; that kingdom which the Messiah came
into the world to establish. That kingdom, however, is presented
in different aspects, or, in other words, Christ exercises his royal
authority, so to speak, in different spheres.
600 PART m. Ch. XI.— kingly OFFICE OF CHRIST.
Christ''^ Dominion over the Universe.
Christ has what theologians are accustomed to call his king-
dom of power. As Theanthropos and as Mediator, all power
in heaven and upon earth has been committed to his hands.
(Matt, xxviii. 18.) In Psalm viii. 6, it is declared to be the pur-
l)()se of God that all things sliould be put under the feet of man.
This purpose, we are taught by the Apostle, God fulfilled in the
exaltation of Christ, " when he raised him from the dead, and set
him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all
principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name
that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is
to come ; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him
to be the head ov^er all things to the church." (Eph. i. 20-22.)
In 1 Corinthians xv. 27, the argument is pushed to its utmost ex-
treme. When all things are said to be put under the feet of Christ,
nothing is to be excepted from this subjection, except Him " which
did put all things under him." And in Hebrews ii. 8, it is said,
" In that he put all (ra -rravTa, the universe) in subjection under
him, he left nothing that is not put under him." The same uni-
versality of dominion is implied in Christ's sitting at the right hand
of God. As this session on the throne of God involves equality
with God in glory and dominion, it cannot be said of any creature.
And as it is said of Christ it proves that Christ is a divine person,
and is invested with all the power and authority of God. This is
the Apostle's argument in Hebrews i. 13. " To which of the
angels (to what created being) said he at any time. Sit on my
right hand?" The Apostle says to the Philippians, that Him,
who though equal with God was found in fashion as a man, " God
hath highly exalted, and given him a name which is above every
name : that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things
in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth."
(Phil. ii. 9, 10.) This is a perfectly exhaustive statement. All
in heaven, all in earth, and all under the earth, include all rational
creatures. The person to whom they are to bow the knee is
Jesus, not the Logos, but the God-man. And the acknowledgment
which they are to make is, that He is Lord, i. e., their Lord, their
absolute proprietor and Sovereign. It is in this sense also, that
the Apostle says (Heb. i. 2), that God hath appointed the Son
heir of all things. It is in virtue of this dominion over the uni-
verse that Christ is called Lord of lords and King of kings, i. e.,
the Sovereign over all other sovereigns in heaven and on earth.
§3.] NATURE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 601
This universal authority is exercised in a providential control,
and for the benefit of his Churcli. He employs the angels as
ministering spirits, to minister to the heirs of salvation. He con-
trols and restrains the principalities, powers, world-rulers, and spirits
of wickedness. (Eph. vi. 12.) He overrules all the affairs of na-
tions and of individuals to the same end. He directs all events
concerning his people severally and his Church collectively. Paul
constantly recognized this providential control of Christ as direct-
ing all his steps. Under the present dispensation, therefore, Christ
is the God of providence. It is in and through and by Him that
the universe is governed. This dominion or kingdom is to last
until its object is accomplished, i. e., until all his enemies, all forms
of evil, and even death itself is subdued. Then this kingdom,
this mediatorial government of the universe, is to be given up. (1
Cor. XV. 24.)
Christ's Spiritual Kingdom.
But besides this kingdom of power, Christ has a kingdom of
grace. This also is exhibited under two aspects. It includes the
relation in which He stands to his true people individually and col-
lectively (the invisible Church) ; and the relation He sustains to
the visible Church, or the body of his professing people.
He is the king of every believing soul. He translates it from
the kingdom of darkness. He brings it into subjection to Himself.
He rules in and reigns over it. Every believer recognizes Christ
as his absolute Sovereign ; Lord of his inward, as well as of his out-
ward, life. He yields to Him the entire subjection of the reason,
of the conscience, and of the heart. He makes Him the object of
reverence, love, and obedience. In Him he trusts for protection
from all enemies, seen and unseen. On Him he relies for help in
every emergency, and for final triumph. On Him the loyalty of
the believer terminates. To acquit himself as a good soldier of
Jesus Christ, to spend and be spent in his service and in the pro-
motion of his kingdom, becomes the governing purpose of his life.
The terms of admission into this spiritual kingdom are faith
and repentance (John iii. 3, 5), " Except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God ; " or,
conversion (Matt, xviii. 3), " Except ye be converted, and be-
come as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven ; " purity of life (1 Cor. vi. 9), " The unrighteous shall
not inherit the kingdom of God," nor " extortioners ; " nor such
as indulge in " adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.
602 PART in. Ch. XL — kingly OFFICE OF CHRIST.
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
such like ; of which," the Apostle says, " I tell you before, as
I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Gal. v. 19-21.)
On the other hand, we are taught that no external profession
secures admission into this kingdom. " Not every one that saith
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."
(Matt. vii. 21.) Nor any punctiliousness in the performance of
rites and ceremonies, " Except your righteousness shall exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case
enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. v. 20.) " He is not
a Jew, which is one outwardly ; neither is that circumcision,
which is outward in the flesh." (Rom. ii. 28.) " For in Jesus
Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision."
(Gal. V. 6.) "Baptism doth also now save us; not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience
towards God." (1 Pet. iii. 21.) Nor membership in any exter-
nal community, " Think not to say within yourselves. We have
Abraham to our father." (Matt. iii. 9.) " They are not all Israel,
which are of Israel." (Rom. ix. 6.) The kingdom of Christ, in
this aspect of it, is a purely spiritual community, consisting of those
truly and inwardly his people.
The laws of this kingdom require first and above all, faith in
Jesus Christ ; the sincere belief that He is the Son of God and the
Saviour of the world, and cordial submission to Him and trust in
Him as our prophet, priest, and king. With this faith is united
supreme love. " He that loveth father or mother more than me,
is not worthy of me : and he that loveth son or daughter more
than me, is not worthy of me He that findeth his life,
shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find
it." (Matt. X. 37, 39.) " If any man come to me, and hate not
his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
(Luke xiv. 26.) " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ,
let him be anathema maranatha." (1 Cor. xvi. 22.) With this
supreme love are to be connected all the other religious affections.
Christians are the worshippers of Christ. (1 Cor. i. 2.) Christ
requires his disciples to honour Him as they honour the Father.
(John V. 23.) They are to believe in Him (put the same con-
fidence in Him), as they do in God. (John xiv. 1.) It is the
same offence under the new dispensation to refuse to worship
§ 3.] NATURE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 603
Christ as God manifest in the flesh, that it was nnder the old
economy to refuse to worship Jehovah as the only living and
true God. In both cases it was a violation of the fundamental
law of the kingdom, and of necessity worked excision from God's
people. But if we are to recognize Christ as Thomas did (John
XX. 28), as our Lord and our God, then of course we are bound
not only to worship, but to obey Him. We stand to Him in the
same relation that a slave does to his master, except that our sub-
jection to Him is voluntary and joyful. We belong to Him, not
only as the Creator, being his creatures, but also as the Thean-
thropos, being purchased by his blood. (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.) His
will, and not our own, must govern our conduct, and determine
the use we make of our powers. All we gain, whether of knowl-
edge, wealth, or influence, is his. He, and not we ourselves, is
the object or end of our living. It is Christ for believers to
live. His glory and the advancement of his kingdom, are the only
legitimate objects to which they can devote their powers or re-
sources ; the only ends consistent with their relation to Christ, and
the full enjoyment of the blessedness which membership in his
kingdom secures.
The laws of the kingdom moreover require not only these duties
to Christ, but that his people should be holy in heart and life.
They must be poor in spirit ; meek ; merciful ; peace-makers ; long-
suffering ; ready to forgive ; disinterested, not seeking their own ;
bearing all things ; believing all things ; and hoping all things.
They are forbidden to be avaricious, or covetous, or proud, or
worldly minded. In one word, they are required to be like Christ,
in disposition, character, and conduct.
The special law of Christ's kingdom is that its members should
love one another, not only with the love of complacency and
delight, but with brotherly love. A love which leads to the recog-
nition of all Christians as brethren, belonging to the same family,
entitled to the same privileges and blessings; and which prompts to
and secures ministering to their necessities, so that there be no lack.
This law is laid down at length by the Apostle in 2 Corinthians
viii. The law of the kingdom is, that every man should labour
to the extent of his ability to supply his own wants and the wants
of those dependent on him ; for " if any would not work neither
should he eat" (2 Thess. iii. 10) ; but all deficiency which labour
cannot supply is to be supplied by those having the ability. " Whoso
hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the
604 PART ni. Ch. XL— kingly OFFICE OF CHRIST.
love of God in him ? " (1 John iii. 17.) In praying, therefore,
that the kingdom of God may come, we pray, among other things,
that all men may recognize Christ as their king, invested with
divine majesty and authority, and that they should all be like Him
in cliaracter and conduct.
This kingdom of Christ over all his people is exercised not only
by his power in their protection and direction, but especially by
his Word and Spirit, through which and by whom He reigns in
and rules over them.
This kingdom of Christ is everlasting. That is, the relation
which believers sustain to Christ on earth they will sustain to Him
forever.
Chrisfs Visible Kingdom.
As religion is essentially spiritual, an inward state, the kingdom
of Christ as consisting of the truly regenerated, is not a visible
body, except so far as goodness renders itself visible by its outward
manifestations. Nevertheless as Christ has enjoined upon his people
duties which render it necessary that they should organize them-
selves in an external society, it follows that there is and must be a
visible kingdom of Christ in the world. Christians are required to
associate for public worship, for the admission and exclusion of
members, for the administration of the sacraments, for the mainte-
nance and propagation of the truth. They therefore form them-
selves into churches, and collectively constitute the visible kingdom
of Christ on earth, consisting of all who profess the true religion,
together with their children.
Nature of this Kingdom.
First, it is spiritual. That is, it is not of this world. It is not anal-
ogous to the other kingdoms which existed, or do still exist among
men. It has a different origin and a different end. Human king-
doms are organized among men, under the providential government
of God, for the promotion of the temporal well-being of society.
The kingdom of Christ was organized immediately by God, for the
promotion of religious objects. It is spiritual, or not of this world,
moreover, because it has no power over the lives, liberty, or prop-
erty of its members ; and because all secular matters lie beyond its
jurisdiction. Its prerogative is simply to declare the truth of God
as revealed in his Word and to require that the truth should be
professed and obeyed by all under its jurisdiction. It can decide no
question of politics or science which is not decided in the Bible. The
kingdom of Christ, under the present dispensation, therefore, is not
§ 3.] NATURE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 605
worldly even in the sense in which the ancient theocracy was of
this world. The latter organized the Hebrews as a nation, and
directed all their municipal and national, as well as their social and
religious affairs. It, therefore, could not coexist in time and
place with any other national organization. The kingdom of Christ
being designed to embrace all other kingdoms, can exist under all
forms of civil government without interfering with any. It was
especially in this view that Christ declared that his kingdom was not
of this world. His immediate design was to vindicate his claim to
be a king, from the charge that such claim was incompatible with
the authority of the civil magistrate or of the Roman emperor. He
intended to say that his kingdom was of such a nature that it
necessitated no collision with the legitimate authority of any civil
government. It belonged to a different, sphere. It took cogni-
zance of things which lie beyond the province of secular power ;
and it left untouched all that belongs peculiarly to civil rulers.
Christ, therefore, could be recognized and obeyed as king by those
who continued to render unto Cassar the things which were Caesar's.
Every form or claim of the Church, therefore, which is incompat-
ible with the legitimate authority of the State, is inconsistent with
the nature of Christ's kingdom as declared by Himself.
Secondly, this kingdom of Christ is catholic or universal. It
embraces all who profess the true religion. It is confined to no
one organization ; but includes them all ; because all are under the
authority of Christ and subject to the laws which He has laid down
in his Word. As all Christians are included in the kingdom of
Christ, it is the duty of all to recognize each other as belonging to
one great commonwealth, and as subjects of the same sovereign.
Thirdly, this form of Christ's kingdom is temporaiy. It is to be
merged into a higher form when He shall come the second time
without sin unto salvation. As an external organization it is de-
signed to answer certain ends, and will cease when those ends are
accomplished.
Fourthly, the kingdom of Christ is not a democracy, nor an
aristocracy, but truly a kingdom of which Christ is absolute sov-
ereign. This involves the denial, —
1. That the State has any authority to make laws to determine
the faith, to regulate the worship, or to administer the discipline
of the Church. It can neither appoint nor depose its officers.
2. It denies that any civil officer as such, or in virtue of his
office, has any authority in the kingdom of Christ ; much less can
any such officer be the head of the Church.
606 PART III. Ch. XL — kingly OFFICE OF CHRIST.
3. It denies that Church power vests ultimately in the people, or
in the clergy. All their power is purely ministerial. It is derived
from Christ, and is exercised by others in his name, and according
to the rules laid down in his Word. How far the Church has dis-
cretionary power in matters of detail is a disputed point. By some
all such discretion is denied. They maintain that everything con-
cerning the organization, officers, and modes of action of the Church
is as minutely laid down in the New Testament as the curtains,
tassels, and implements of the tabernacle are detailed in the Old
Testament. Others hold that while certain principles on this sub-
ject are laid down in Scripture, considerable latitude is allowed as
to the means and manner in which the Church may carry them
out in the exercise of her functions. This latter view has always
been practically adopted. Even the Apostolical Churches were not
all organized precisely in the same way. The presence of an
Apostle, or of a man clothed with apostolical authority, as in the
case of James in Jerusalem, necessarily gave to a Church a form
■which other churches where no Apostle permanently resided could
not have. Some had deaconesses, others had not. So all churches
in every age and wherever they have existed, have felt at liberty
to modify their organization and modes of action so as to suit them
to their peculiar circumstances. All such modifications are mat-
ters of indifference. They cannot be made to bind the conscience,
nor can they be rendered conditions of Christian or ecclesiastical
fellowship.
As Christ is the only head of the Church it follows that its alle-
giance is to Him, and that whenever those out of the Church
undertake to reo-ulate its affairs or to curtail its liberties, its mem-
bers are bound to obey Him rather than men. They are bound
by all legitimate means to resist such usurpations, and to stand fast
in the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. They are
under equal obligation to resist all undue assumption of authority
by those within the Church, whether it be by the brotherhood or
by individual officers, or by Church councils or courts. The alle-
giance of the people terminates on Christ. They are bound to
obey others only so far as obedience to them is obedience to Him.
In the early ^ges some endeavoured to impose on Christians the
yoke of the Jewish law. This of course they were bound to resist.
In the following centuries, and by degrees, the intolerable rituals,
ceremonies, fasts, festivals, and priestly, prelatical, and papal as-
sumptions, which oppress so large a part of the Christian world,
have been imposed upon the people in derogation to the authority
§3.] NATURE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 607
of Christ as the sole head of the Church. Councils, provincial and
ecumenical, have not only prescribed creeds contrary to the Scrip-
tures, but also have made laws to bind the conscience, and ordained
observances which Christ never enjoined.
As Christ is the head of his earthly kingdom, so is He its only
lawgiver. He prescribes, —
1. The terms of admission into his kingdom. These cannot
be rightfully altered by any human authority. Men can neither
add to them, nor detract from them. The rule which He has
laid down on this subject is, that what He requires as a con-
dition for admission into his kingdom in heaven, is to be required
as a condition of admission to his kingdom on earth. Nothing
more and nothing less is to be demanded. We are to receive all
those whom Christ receives. No degree of knowledge, no confes-
sion, beyond that which is necessary to salvation, can be demanded
as a condition of our recognizing any one as a Christian brother
and treating him as such. Philip baptized the Eunucli on the
confession " I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." (Acts
viii. 37.) " Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not
to doubtful disputations." (Rom. xiv. 1.) " Who art thou that
judgest another man's servant ? to his own master he standeth or
falleth." (Verse 4.) " Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the
Christ, is born of God." (1 John v. 1.) For men to reject from
their fellowship those whom God has received into his, is an intol-
erable assumption. All those terms of Church communion which
have been set up beyond the credible profession of faith in Christ
are usurpations of an authority which belongs to Him alone.
2. A second law of this visible kingdom of our Lord is that her-
etics and those guilty of scandalous offences should be excommu-
nicated. " A man that is an heretic, after the first and second
admonition reject." (Titus iii. 10.) " I have written unto you
not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a for-
nicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or
an extortioner ; with such an one no not to eat." (1 Cor. v. 11.)
Our Lord teaches that such an offender when he refuses to hear
" the Church " is to be regarded as a " heathen man and a pub-
lican." (Matt, xviii. 17.)
3. Christ has ordained that the power of exercising discipline
and the other prerogatives of the Church should be in the hands
of officers, having certain gifts and qualifications and duly ap-
pointed.
4. That the right to judge of the qualifications of such officers
608 PART m. Ch. XI. — kingly office of CHRIST.
is vested in, or rather belongs to those who by the Holy Ghost
have themselves been called to be office bearers.
5. That such officers are not lords over God's heritage, but
servants. Their authority is restricted to prescribed limits, and
the people have a right to a substantive part in the government of
the Church through their representatives.
6. Every member of Christ's kingdom is bound to obey his
brethren in the Lord. Tiiis obligation does not rest on consent
or mutual covenant, but on the fact that they are brethren, the
temples and organs of the Holy Spirit. It is, therefore, not lim-
ited to those brethren with whom the individual chooses to asso-
ciate himself. It hence follows that in the normal condition of
Christ's kingdom, each part would be subject to the whole, and
the whole would be one body in the Lord.
The development of these several points belongs to the depart-
ment of Ecclesiology.
§ 4. The Kingdom of Glory.
The Scriptures teach that when Christ shall come again, He will
gather his people into the kingdom prepared for them from the
foundation of the world. Concerning that kingdom it is taucjht, —
1. That it shall consist only of the redeemed. None but the
regenerate or converted can enter that kingdom. The tares are to
be separated from the wheat. The evil, we ai'e told (Gal. v. 21),
" shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Nothing that defiles or
is untrue can enter there.
2. Those counted worthy of that kingdom shall not only be ele-
vated to the perfection of their nature, but shall also be exalted to
great dignity, power, and glory. They shall be kings and priests
unto God. They are to sit on thrones. They are to judge angels.
They are to reign with Christ, sharing his dominion and glory.
3. This kingdom is to be everlasting.
4. The bodies of the saints, now natural, must be rendered
spiritual. This mortal must put on immortality, and this corrupti-
ble must put on incorruption ; for " flesh and blood (the body as
now organized) cannot inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Cor. xv.
50.)
5. The seat of this kingdom is not clearly revealed. Some sup-
pose that it is to be on this earth regenerated and fitted for this
new order of things. Others understand the Scriptures to teach
that heaven as indicating an entirely different locality, is to be the
final home of the redeemed.
§4.] THE KINGDOM OF GLORY, 609
6. Diversity of opinion exists as to the time when this kingdom
shall be inaugurated. ChiHasts have commonly held that Christ is
to come a thousand years (or a protracted period) before the gen-
eral resurrection and final judgment, and reign visibly on earth,
and that this is the kingdom to which the prophecies and promises
of Scripture especially refer. This doctrine of necessity greatly
modifies the view taken of the nature of this kingdom. It must
be an earthly kingdom, as distinguished from that which is spirit-
ual and heavenly. It must be a kingdom which flesh and blood
can inherit. The common doctrine of the Church on the subject
is that the general resurrection, the final judgment, the end of the
world, and the inauguration of Christ's kingdom of glory are syn-
chronous events.
These are topics which belong to the head of Eschatology.
CHAPTER XII.
HUMILIATION OF CHRIST.
§ 1. Includes his Incarnation.
The Apostle tells us that Christ humbled Himself. In answer to
the question, Wherein his humiliation consisted? our standards
wisely content themselves with the simple statements of the Scrip-
tures : " Christ's humiliation consisted in his beino; born and that
in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries
of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross ;
in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a
time."
On all these points the schoolmen and modern philosophical the-
ologians have indulged in unprofitable speculations. All that is
known, or can be known respecting them is the facts themselves.
The person of whom all the particulars above enumerated are
predicated, is the Eternal Son of God. It was He who was born,
who suffered, and who died. It was a person equal with God, who,
the Apostle says, in Philippians ii. 7, 8, was made in the likeness
of men, and found in fashion as a man. It was the Son of God
who was born of a woman, and made under the lavv. (Gal. iv. 4.)
In the Old Testament it was predicted that a virgin should con-
ceive, and bring forth a son, who should be called Immanuel,
the mighty God. In revealing these facts the Scriptures reveal all
we can know concerning the birth of Christ. He was born of a
woman. In the birth of an ordinary human being there are mys-
teries which neither speculation nor science can solve. All we
know is that in conception an immaterial principle, a human soul,
is joined in unity of life with the germ of a human body, and,
after a given process of development, is born a perfect child. In
the case of our Lord, by the immediate or supernatural power of
the Holy Ghost, these elements of humanity, material and imma-
terial (body and soul), from the beginning of their existence were
in personal union with the Logos, so that the child born of the
Viro-in was in a true and exclusive sense the Son of God.
In opposition to the early heretics, some of whom said that
§ 1.] INCLUDES THE INCARNATION. 611
Christ had no real human body, and others, that his body was not
fashioned out of matter, but formed of a celestial substance, the
fathers inserted in their creeds, that he was " born of the substance
of the Virgin Mary." This is involved in the Scriptural state-
ment that He was born of a woman, which can only mean that He
was born in the sense in which other children of men are born of
women. This is essential to his true humanity, and to that like-
ness to men which makes them his brethren, and which was se-
cured by his taking part in flesh and blood. (Heb. ii. 14.)
The incarnation of the Son of God, Itis stooping to take into
personal and perpetual union with Himself a nature infinitely lower
than his own, was an act of unspeakable condescension, and there-
foi'e is properly included in the particulars in which He humbled
Himself It is so represented in the Scriptures, and that it is such
is involved in the very nature of the act, on any other hypothesis
than that which assumes the equality of God and man ; or that
man is a modus existendi of the Deity, and that the highest.
The Lutheran theologians exclude the incarnation as an element
of Christ's humiliation, on the ground that his humiliation was con-
fined to his earthly existence, whereas his union with oiar nature
continues in heaven. This, however, is contrary to Scripture,
because the Apostle says that He made himself of no reputation in
becoming man. (Phil. ii. 7.) It is constantly represented as a
wonderful exhibition of his love for his people. It was for their
sake that He stooped to become a partaker of flesh and blood.
The objection that his humiliation can include only what is limited
to the earthly stage of his existence, is purely verbal or technical.
That He bears his glorified humanity in heaven, having transmuted
that humble mantle into a robe of glory, does not detract from the
condescension involved in its assumption, and in his bearing it witli
all its imperfections during his earthly pilgrimage.
There are some forms of the modern speculations on this subject
which effectually preclude our regarding the incarnation as an act
of humiliation. It is assumed, as stated on a previous page, that
this union of the divine and human is the culminating point in the
regular development of hunmnity. Its relation to the sinfulness
of man and the redemption of the race is merely incidental. It
would have been reached had sin never entered into the world.
It is obvious that this is a mere philosophical theory, entirely out-
side of the Scriptures, and can legitimately have no influence on
Christian doctrine. The Bible everywhere teaches that God sent
his Son into the world to save sinners ; that He was born of a
612 PART III. Ch. XII. — humiliation OF CHRIST.
woman and made under the law for our redemption ; that He be-
came man in order that He might die, and by death destroy the
power of Satan. No specuLation inconsistent with these prevail-
ing representations of the Word of God can be admitted as true
by those to whom that word is the rule of faith.
Christ was horn in a Low Condition.
Not only the assumption of human nature, but also all the cir-
cumstances by which it was attended enter into the Scriptural view
of the humiliation of our Lord. Had He when He came into the
world so manifested his glory, and so exercised his power, as to
have coerced all nations to ackno\vledo;e Him as their Lord and
God, and all kings to bow at his feet and bring Him their tributes,
enthroning Him as the rig-htful and absolute sovereign of the whole
earth, it had still been an act of unspeakable condescension for
God to become man. But to be a servant ; to be born in a stable
and cradled in a manger ; to be so poor as not to have a place
where to lay his head; to appear without form or comeliness, so as
to be despised and rejected of men, makes the condescension of
our Lord to pass all comprehension. There is, indeed, a wonder-
ful sublimity in this. It shows the utter worthlessness of earthly
pomp and splendour in the sight of God. The manifestation of God
in the form of a servant, has far more power not only over the im-
agination but also over the heart, than his appearing in the form of
an earthly king clothed in purple and crowned with gold. We bow
at the feet of the poor despised Galilean with profounder rever-
ence and love than we could experience had He appeared as Sol-
omon in all his glory.
§ 2. He was made under the Law.
The humiliation of Christ included also his being made under
the law. The law to which Christ subjected Himself was,
(1.) The law given to Adam as a covenant of works ; that is, as
prescribing perfect obedience as the condition of life. (2.) The
Mosaic law which bound the chosen people. (3.) The moral law
as a rule of duty. Christ was subject to the law in all these as-
pects, in that He assumed the obligation to fulfil all righteousness,
i. e., to do everything which the law in all its forms demanded.
This subjection to the law was voluntary and vicarious. It was
voluntary, not only as his incarnation was a voluntary act, and
therefore all its consequences were assumed of his own free will ;
but also because even after He assumed our nature He was free
§ 2.] HE WAS MADE UNDER THE LAW. 613
from obligation to the law in every sense of the word, until He
voluntarily subjected Himself to its demands. The law is made
for men, i. e., for human persons. But Christ was not a human
person. He remained after the incarnation, as He had been from
eternity, a divine person. All his relations to the law, therefore,
except as voluntarily assumed, were those which God himself sus-
tains to it. God being the source of all law cannot be suiyect to
it, except by an act of humiliation. Even in human governments
an autocrat is above the laws. They derive their authority from
Him. He can abrogate or change them at pleasure. He is sub-
ject so far as men are concerned to nothing but his own will. And
so God, as the source of all law to his creatures, is Himself subject
to none. He acts in consistency with his own nature, and it is in-
conceivable that He should act otherwise. He cannot be subject
to any imposed rule of action, or to anything out of Himself.
Whatever is true of God, is true of God manifested in the flesh.
That Christ, therefore, should assume the obligation to fulfil the
conditions of the covenant made with Adam, to observe all the
injunctions of the Mosaic law, and submit to the moral law with its
promises and penalty was an act of voluntary humiliation. This
subjection to the law was not only voluntary, but vicarious. He
was in our stead, as our representative, and for our benefit. He
was made under the law that He might redeem those who were
under the law. (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) It was in his character of Redeemer
that He submitted to this subjection. There was no necessity for it
on his part. As He was Lord of the Sabbath, so He was Lord of the
law in all its extent and in all its forms. Obedience to it was not
imposed ab extra as a condition of his personal happiness and en-
joyment of the divine favour. These were secured by his God-
head. It was therefore solely for us that He was made under the
law. As by Adam's disobedience we were constituted sinners,
He obeyed that we might be constituted righteous. (Rom. v. 19.)
The whole course of Christ on earth was one of voluntary obe-
dience. He came to do the will of his Father. In the Old Testa-
ment his common prophetic designation was servant. He was
called the servant of the Lord, " my servant." He says of Him-
self, " I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the
will of him that sent me." (John vi. 38.) " Though he were a
Son, yet learned he obedience." (Heb. v. 8.) " Being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross." (Phil. ii. 8.) All this was
for us. His subjection to the law and to the will of the Father
was voluntary and vicarious for us men and for our salvation.
614 PART in. Ch. Xn.— humiliation of CHRIST.
§ 3. His Sufferings and Death.
The sufferings of Christ, and especially his ignominious death
on the cross, are an important element in his humiliation. These
sufferings continued from the beginning to the end of his earthly
life. They arose partly from the natural infirmities and sensibili-
ties of the nature which He assumed, partly from the condition of
poverty in which He lived, partly from constant contact with sin-
ners, which was a continued grief to his holy soul and caused Him
to exclaim, " How long shall I be with you ? how long shall I
suffer you ; " partly from the insults, neglects, and opposition to
which He was subjected ; partly from the cruel buffetings and
scorning to which He submitted, and especially from the agonies
of the crucifixion, the most painful as well as the most igno-
minious mode of inflicting the penalty of death ; partly from the
anguish caused by the foresight of the dreadful doom that awaited
the whole Jewish nation ; and especially no doubt from the myste-
rious sorrow arising from the load of his people's sins and the hid-
ing of his Father's face, which forced from his brow the sweat of
blood in the garden, and from his lips the cry of anguish which
He uttered on the cross. These are wonders not only of love,
but of self-abnegation and of humiliation, which angels endeavour
to comprehend, but which no human mind can understand or esti-
mate. There was never sorrow like unto his sorrow.
§ 4. He endured the Wrath of God.
Our standards specify " the wrath of God," as a distinct particu-
lar of the burden of sorrow which Christ, for our sakes, humbled
Himself to bear. The word wrath is the familiar Scriptural term
to express any manifestation of the displeasure of God against sin.
Christ, although in Himself perfectly holy, bore our sins. He was
" made sin " (2 Cor. v. 21) ; or, treated as a sinner. He was
*' numbered with the transgressors " (Is. liii. 12), not only in the
judgment of men, but in the dealing of God with his soul when
He stood in the place of sinners. Such Psalms as the sixteenth,
fortieth, and especially the twenty-second, which treat of the suf-
ferings of the Messiah, represent Him as passing through all the
experiences consequent on the punishment of sin, save those which
have their source in the sinfulness of the sufferer. We therefore
find that even such language as that in Psalm xl. 12, " Innumei-
able evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken
hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up : they are more
§5.] HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 615
than the hairs of mine head ; therefore my heart faileth me," may
not inaj)propriately be taken as the language of liis holy soul. In
that case " mine iniquities " (\nbl3?), as parallel with " evils " (ni2?~i)>
must mean " my sufferings for sin," i. e., the punishment I am
called to bear. The words uttered by our Lord upon the cross,
" My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " show that
He was suffering; under the hiding of his Father's face. What
that experience was it is impossible for us to understand. Yet as
in other cases He suffered anxiety, fear, a sinking of the heart, and
otlier natural states of mind incident to the circumstances in which
He was placed ; so also He suffered all that a holy being could
suffer that was enduring the divinely appointed penalty for sin,
wliich penalty He sustained for his people. Into the relation be-
tween his divine and imman nature as revealed in these experi-
ences, it is in vain for us to inquire. As tliat relation was con-
sistent with his human nature's being ignorant, with its progressive
development, with all its natural affections, with its feeling appre-
hension in the presence of danger, and dread in the prospect of
death, so it was consistent with the feeling of depression and
anguish under the obscuration of the favour of God. As the suffer-
ings of Christ were not merely the pains of martyrdom, but were
judicially inflicted in satisfaction of justice, they produced the
effect due to their specific character. This of course does not im-
ply that our Lord suffered as the finally impenitent suffer. Their
sufferings are determined by their subjective state. The loss of the
divine favour produces in them hatred, venting itself in blasphe-
mies (Rev. xvi. 10, 11), but in Christ it produced the most earnest
longing after the light of God's countenance, and entire submission,
in the midst of the depressing and overwlielming darkness.
§ 5. His Death and Burial.
Christ humbled Himself even unto death, and continued under the
])ower of death for a time. The reality of Christ's death has never
been disputed among Christians. Some modern rationalists, un-
willing to admit a miraculous resurrection, endeavoured to show
that death was not in his case actually consummated, but that He
was deposited in an unconscious state in the tomb. In answer to
the arguments of rationalists, certain Ciiristlan writers have taken
the trouble to demonstrate, from the facts stated in the account of
the crucifixion, that it was not a swoon, but actual death which
occurred. We are raised above such question by believing the
inspiration of the Now Testament. In the apostolic writings the
1
616 PART III. Ch. XII. —humiliation OF CHRIST.
death of Christ is so often asserted and assumed that the fact can-
not be doubted by any who admit the infallible authority of those
writings.
Under the clause, " He continued under the power of death for
a time," is intended to be expressed all that is meant by ancient
creeds which asserted " He descended into hell." Such at least is
the view presented in our standards in accordance with the teach-
ings of the majority of the Reformed theologians.
That the sufferings of Christ ceased the moment He expired on
the cross, is plain from John xix. 30, where it is recorded, " When
Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished (TcreXco-rai) :
and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." This is univer-
sally admitted. As, however, such passages as Psalms xviii. 5, and
cxvi. 3, " The sorrows of death " (Hebrew Sheol in Psalm xviii.
5), were understood to mean extreme suffering, many of the Re-
formed understood the descensus ad inferos to refer to the extreme
agony of our Lord in the garden and upon the cross, under the
hiding of his Father's face. But, in the first place, the literal
meaning of those passages is, " The bands (not the sorrows) of
Sheol, or (as it is in Psalms cxvi. 3), of death." The allusion in
both cases is the familiar one to a net. The idea is that the Psalm-
ist felt himself so entangled that death appeared inevitable. This
is something very different from what is meant by " descending
into Hell or Sheol." And in the second place, the position which
the clause in question holds in the creed forbids this interpretation.
It follows the clause referring to the death and burial of Christ. It
is the natural exegesis of the words immediately preceding it.
" He was crucified, dead, and buried, he descended into Sheol,"
i. e., he passed into the invisible state. But it would be utterly
incongruous to say, " He was dead, buried, and suffered extreme
aofony," when it is admitted that his sufferings ended upon the cross.
In the larger Westminster Catechism,^ it is said, " Christ's hu-
miliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continu-
ing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till
the third day, which hath been otherwise expressed in these words.
He descended into hell.'''' That this is the correct view of Christ's
descensus ad inferos may be argued, —
1. From the original and proper meaning of the Greek word
aSrjs, and the corresponding English word hell. Both mean the
unseen world. The one signifies what is unseen, the other what is
covered and thus hidden from view. Both are used as the render-
1 Answer to Question 50.
§5.] HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 617
ing for tlie Hebrew word biStt? (probably from bstr to ask, or de-
mand), the state or place of the dead ; the orcus rapax of the Lat-
ins. All the dead, the righteous and the wicked, alike go into the
invisible world, or, in this sense, " descend into hell." Hence to be
buried, to go down to the grave, to descend into hell, are in Scrip-
tural language equivalent forms of expression. In Genesis xxxvii.
35, Jacob says n^ist:^' l^S, which the Septuagint renders Kara/Sr/-
cro/Lxai CIS aSou ; the Vulgate, Descendam in infernum ; the English,
" I will go down into the grave." Thus also in Psalm xxx. 4,
David says, '*tpp3 biSttJ-jn n^b3;n, which the Septuagint renders,
dviyyayes «| aSou rrjv ^l/v^r^v jxov ; the Vulgate, " Eduxisti ab inferno
animam meam : " and so Luther, " Du hast meine Seele aus der
Holle gefiihret ; " while the English version is, " Thou hast brought
up my soul from the grave," which is explained in the following
clause, " Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to
the pit." In Scriptural language, therefore, to descend into Hades
or Hell, means nothing more than to descend to the grave, to pass
from the visible into the invisible world, as happens to all men
when they die and are buried.
2. This view is confirmed by the fact that these words were
not in the creed originally. They were introduced in the fourth
century, and then not as a separate or distinct article, but as merely
explanatory. " He was dead and buried," i. e., he descended into
hell. That the two clauses were at first considered equivalent is
obvious, because some copies of the creed had the one form, some
the other, and some both, though all were intended to say the
same thing.
3. The passages of Scripture which are adduced to prove that
Christ descended into hell in a sense peculiar to Himself, do not
teach that doctrine. In Psalm xvi. 10, " Thou wilt not leave my
soul in hell ; neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see cor-
ruption," merely expresses the confidence of the speaker that God
would not leave him under the power of death. ' Thou wilt not
deliver me to tlie power of Sheol, nor suffer me to see corruption.'
This is the precise sense ascribed to the passage by St. Peter in
Acts ii. 27-31, and by St. Paul in Acts xili. 34, 35. In both cases
the Psalm is quoted to prove the resurrection of Christ. David
was left in the state of the dead ; his body did see corruption.
Christ was delivered from the grave before corruption had time to
affect his sacred person. My soul ("IC??), may be taken here, as so
often elsewhei-e, for the perscmal pronoun, as in the passage quoted
above. Psalm xxx. 4 : " Thou hast brought up my soul (me)
618 PART ni. Ch. Xn. — humiliation of CHRIST.
from the grave." See Psalm iii. 2, " Many there be which say
of my soul (me), there is no help for him in God." Psalm vii. 3,
"Lest he tear my soul (me) like a lion," Psalm xi. 1, "How-
say ye to my soul (to me) Flee as a bird to your mountain."
Psalm XXXV. 7, " A pit which without cause they have digged for
my soul (for me)." But even if the words " my soul " be taken
in their strict sense, the meaning is still the same. The souls of
men at death pass into the invisible world, they are hidden from
the view and companionship of men. This condition was to con-
tinue in the case of Christ only for a few days. He was to be
recalled to life. His soul was to be reunited to his body, as it was
before.
A second passage relied upon in this matter is Ephesians iv. 9,
" Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first
into the lower parts of the earth ? " By " the lower parts of the
earth " many understand the parts lower than the earth ; the
lower, or infernal regions. But in the first place, this is altogether
an unnecessary interpretation. The words may naturally mean
here, as elsewhere, the lower parts, namely, the earth ; the geni-
tive T^s 7^s being the genitive of opposition. See Isaiah xliv. 23,
"Sing, O ye heavens; .... shout, ye lower pai-ts the earth." In
the second place, the context neither here nor in Psalm Ixviii.
whence the passage is taken, or on which the Apostle is comment-
ing, suggests any other contrast than that between heaven and
earth. ' He that ascended to heaven, is he who first descended
to the earth.' In the third place, the Apostle's object does not
render either necessary or probable any reference to what hap-
pened after the death of Christ. He simply says that the Psalm
(Ixviii.) which speaks of the triumph of its subject must be under-
stood of the Messiah because it speaks of an ascension to heaven,
which implies a previous descent to the earth.
Much less can 1 Timothy iii. 16, where it said of God as man-
ifest in the flesh that He was " seen of angels," be understood of
Christ appearing in the under-world in the presence of Satan and
his angels. The worddyye'Aoi, angels, without qualification, is never
used of fallen angels. The Apostle refers to the evidence afforded
of the divinity of Christ; He was justified by the Spirit, seen and
recognized by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed upon
in the world, and received up into glory. All classes of beings had
been the witnesses of the fact that God was manifested in the flesh.
Much the most difficult and important passage bearing on this
question is 1 Peter iii. 18, 19, " Being put to death in the flesh,
§5.] HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 619
but quickened by the Spirit : by which also he went and preached
to the spirits in prison." The EngUsh version is an exposition, as
well as a translation of the passage. As the words stand in our
Bible they afford no ground for the doctrine that Christ after death
went into hell and preached to the spirits there confined. The
Greek is, OavaTOjOels fJikv (rapKi, ^(aoiroirjOei^ Se Tri/ev/xart, iv Ji Kat rots iv
^vXaKTJ TTvevfiaa-L TropevOeU e.Kypv$ei'. If in this passage crapKi means the
body, and Tricu'/xan, the soul; if the dative is to have the same
force in both clauses; and if ^woTrotry^ci's be taken to mean preserved
alive; then the natural interpretation undoubtedly is, 'Being put
to death as to the body, but continuing alive as to the soul, in
which having gone he preached to the spirits in prison.' How-
ever different the views entertained as to what spirits are here
meant, whether the spirits of living men in spiritual bondage ; or
the evil spirits of the dead ; or the spirits of the faithful of former
generations, still detained in Hades; the passage must, in this
view, be understood to teach that Christ preached after his death,
and if so, to the spirits of the dead. This is the interpretation
which has been extensively adopted in all ages of the Church.
The principal argument in its favour is that when o-ap^ and tti eS/xa
are placed in antithesis, if the former mean the body the latter
must mean the soul. In the present case as Christ's death is
spoken of, and as it was only the body that died, it is urged that
(xapKi must refer to the body. The objections, however, to this
interpretation are very serious.
1. When Christ is the subject the antithesis between a-ap^ and
irvevpLa is not necessarily that between the body and soul. It may
be between the human and the divine nature. So in Romans i. 3,
it is said, He was the son of David Kara o-apKa, as to his human
nature ; but the Son of God Kara irvcvfia, as to his divine nature.
2. The word ^(ooTroiew never means to continue in life, but al-
wiays to impart life. Therefore to render ^woTroiTj^ct's, being preserved
alive, is contrar^'^ to the proper meaning of the word. It is more-
ovei opposed to the antithesis between that word and 6ai'aTwdet<i ;
as the one expr^^sses the idea of the infliction of death, the other
expresses that of vivifying. ' He was put to death as to his hu-
manity, or as a man ; but was quickened by the Spirit, or divine
nature, energy or power that resided in his person.' He had
power to lay down his life, and He had power to take it again.
3. The difference between the force of the two datives is justi-
fied and determined by the meaning of the participles with which
aapKL and Trvi-ufxaTi are connected. ' He was put to death as to the
620 PART m. Ch. XIL — humiliation of CHRIST.
flesh ; he was made ahve hy the Spirit.' The one word demands
one force of the dative, and the other a different, but equally legit-
imate sense.
4. Another objection to the interpretation above mentioned is,
that it makes the passage teach a doctrine contrary to the analogy
of faith. Whenever Christ is spoken of as preaching, in all cases
in which the verb K-qprnraeiv is used, it refers to making proclama-
tion of the gospel. If, therefore, this passage teaches that Christ,
after his death and before his resurrection, preached to spirits in
prison, it teaches that He preached the gospel to them. But accord-
ing to the faith of the whole Church, Latin, Lutheran, and Re-
formed, the offer of salvation through the gospel is confined to the
present life. It is certainly a strong objection to an interpretation
of any one passage that it makes it teach a doctrine nowhere else
taught in the Word of God, and which is contrary to the teachings
of that Word, as understood by the universal Church. For such
reasons as these the authors of our standards have discarded the
doctrine of a descensus ad inferos in any other sense than a depart-
ure into the invisible state. The meaning of the whole passage as
given by Beza is in accordance with the doctrine of the Reformed
Church. " Christus, inquit [apostolus], quem dixi virtute vivifi-
catum, jam olim in diebus Noe, quum appararetur area, profectus
sive adveniens, e ccelo videlicet, ne nunc primum putemus ilium
ecclesise curam et administrationem suscepisse adveniens, inquam,
non corpore (quod nondum assumpserat), sed ea ipsa virtute, per
quam postea resurrexit, prsedicavit spiritibus illis, qui nunc in
carcere meritas dant poenas, utpote qui recta monenti Noe ....
parere olim recusarint." ^
The majority of modern interpreters adopt the old interpretation.
Bretschnelder^ expresses the sense of the passage thus: " As God
once through Noah exhorted men to repentance, and threatened
to bring upon them the flood, as a punishment, so Jesus preached
redemption, or announced the completion of the work of atone-
ment, to the souls of men in Hades." According tb others the
souls to whom Christ preached were those who in the days of
Noah had rejected the offers of mercy. According to the Luther-
ans Christ after his death descended to the abode of evil spirits, not
to preach the gospel, but to triumph over Satan and despoil him of
his power. The " Form of Concord "^ says on this subject, " Sim-
1 Beza, Novum Teslamenhim, 1 Pet. iii. 19, edit. (Geneva?) 15(j5, p. 570.
2 Bretschneider, Dogmalik, 3d edit., Leipzig, 1828, vol. ii. p. 219.
8 Art. Lx. 2 ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 788.
§5.] HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 621
pliclter credlmus, quod tota persona (Christi), Deus et homo, post
sepulturam, ad inferos descenderit, Satanam devieerit, potestatem
inferorum everterit, et Diabolo omnem vim et potentiam eripuerit.
Quomodo vero Cliristus id elfecerit, non est ut argutis et sublimi-
bus imaginationibus scrutemur."
The Romish Doctrine of the '■''Descensus ad Inferos.''''
The Romanists teach that the department of Hades to which
Christ descended, was not the abode of evil spirits, but that in
which dwelt the souls of believers who died before the advent of
the Redeemer, and that the object of his descent was neither to
preach the gospel, nor to despoil Satan, but to deliver the pious
dead from the intermediate state in which they then were (called
the Limhus patrurn)^ and to introduce them into heaven. These
were the captives which, according to Ephesians iv. 8, He led in
triumph when He ascended or^high after his resurrection. This
doctrine not only has no Scriptural foundation, but it rests on an
unscriptural theory as to the efficacy of the truth and ordinances
as revealed and ordained under the old dispensation. Believing,
as the Church of Rome does, that saving grace is communicated
only through the Christian sacraments, Romanists are constrained
to believe that there was no real remission of sin, or sanctification,
before the institution of the Christian Church. The sacraments
of the Old Testament, they say simply signified grace, while those
of the New actually convey it. This being the case, believers
dying before the coming of Christ were not really saved, but
passed into a state of negative existence, neither of suffering nor
of happiness, from which it was the object of Christ's descent into
Hades to deliver them. The above are only a few of the specu-
lations in which theologians in all ages of the Church have in-
dulged as to the nature and design of the descensus ad inferos in
which all profess to believe. Whole volumes have been devoted
to this subject.^
The Views of Lutherans and of Modern Theologians on the Hu-
miliation of Christ.
As the Lutherans at the time of the Reformation departed from
the faith of the Church on the person of Christ, they were led
into certain peculiarities of doctrine on other related subjects. In-
1 J. S. Semler, Z)e Vario et Impari Veierum Studio in recolenda Bistoria Descensus Christi
ad Inferos. A. Dietelmaier, Hist. Dogm. de Descensu Christi ad Inferos. J. Clausen, Dog-
matis de Descensu J. C. ad Inf. Ilistorin Biblica et Ecclesiastica. Harker, Diss, de Descensu
Jesu ad Inferos. Bishop Pearson, C>« the Creed.
622 PART III. Ch. XII. — humiliation OF CHRIST.
sisting, as Luther did, on tlie local presence of the body and blood
of Christ in the Eucharist, he was constrained to believe that
Christ as to his human nature was everywhere present. This in-
volved the assumption that, in virtue of the hypostatical union, the*
attributes of the divine, were communicated to his human nature,
so that Christ's human soul was omniscient, almighty, and omni-
present. And as this communication of attributes took place from
the very beginning, the human nature of Christ from the com-
mencement of its existence, was endowed with all divine perfec-
tions. Yet not only in infancy, but throughout the whole of his
earthly pilgi'image. He appeared, except on rare occasions, as an
ordinary man, possessed as a man of no attributes which did not
belong to other men. His miracles of knowledge and power were
occasional manifestations of what as a man He really was, as those
miracles were eifects produced, not by his divine nature or Logos,
nor by the Holy Spirit with whitjh his humanity was endowed
without measure, but by his human nature itself. His humiliation,
therefore, consisted mainly and essentially in his voluntarily abstain-
ing from the exercise and manifestation of the divine attributes
with which his humanity was endowed and imbued. In the " Form
of Concord"^ it is said, " Credimus .... filium hominis ad dex-
teram omnipotentis majestatis et virtutis Dei realiter, hoc est, vere
et reipsa secundum humanam suam naturam esse exaltatum, cum
homo ille in Deum assumptus fuerit, quamprimum in utero matris
a Spiritu Sancto est conceptus Eamque majestatem, ratione
unionis personalis semper Christus habuit : sed in statu suae humili-
tationis sese exinanivit .... Quare majestatem illam non semper,
sed quoties ipsi visum fuit, exseruit, donee formam servi, non autem
naturam humanam post resurrectionem plene et prorsus deponeret,
et in plenariam usurpationem manifestationem et declarationem
divinae majestatis collocaretur Hanc suam potestateni ubi-
que praesens exercere potest, ncque quidquam illi aut impossibile
est aut ignotum. Inde adeo, et quidem facillime, corpus suum
verum et sanguinem suum in sacra coena prsesens distribuere po-
test." " Humana natura .... inde .... quod cum divina na-
tura personaliter unita est ... . prater et supra naturales atque
in ipsa permanentes humanas proprietates, etiam singulares ....
supernaturales .... prserogativas majestatis, glorias, virtutis ac
potentiae super omne, quod nominatur, non solum in hoc seculo
sed etiam in futuro, accepit."^ "[Christus,] postquam . . . .
super omnes ccelos ascendit, et revei'a omnia implet, et ubique non
1 Art. VIII. 16, 17; Hase, Libri Symbolki, pp. 603, 609. 2 Art. viii. 51; Jbid. p. 774.
§5.] HIS DEATH AND BURIAL. 623
tantum ut Deus, verum etiam ut homo, prsesens dominatur et
regnat, a mari ad mare." ^ " Christus .... etiam secundum
assumptam humanam naturam omnia novit et potest." ^ " Eam
majestatem statim in sua conceptione, etiam in utero matris habuit:
sed ut Apostolus loquitur se ipsum exinanivit, eamque, ut D. Lu-
therus docet, in statu suae humiliationis secreto habuit, neque eam
semper, sed quoties ipsi visum f'uit, usurpavit." ^
In the seventeenth century there was an earnest and protracted
dispute among the Lutherans as to the question, whether the hu-
miliation of Christ was a mere Kpvij/L'i (or concealing) of the divine
majesty of his human nature ; or whether it was an actual /ccVwo-ts,
an emptying himself for the time being of the divine attributes
which belonged to his humanity in virtue of the hypostatlcal union.
According to the former view, Christ, as nian, was from the mo-
ment of his conception, everywhere present, omnipotent, and omnis-
cient, and actually in his human nature governed the universe.
The only difference, therefore, between the state of humihation
and that of exaltation, concerns the mode in which this universal
dominion was exercised. While on earth it was in a way not to
be apparent and recognized ; whereas after his ascension, it was
open and avowed. According to the opposite view both these
points were denied. That is, while it was admitted that the human
nature was entitled to these divine attributes and prerogatives,
from the moment of its conception, nevertheless it is said that they
were not claimed or exercised while He was on earth ; and there-
fore during his humiliation although there was a kt^o-is or possession
of the attributes, yet there was not the XPW'-'^ <^^ them, and conse-
quently during that period He was not as man omnipresent, omnis-
cient, and everywhere dominant. The exaltation, therefore, was
not a mere change in the mode of exercising his divine preroo-a-
tives, but an entering on their use as well as on their manifesta-
tion. The theologians of Tiibingen maintained the former view,
those of Giessen the latter. The question having been referred to
the Saxon theologians they decided substantially in favour of the
latter doctrine, and this was the view generally adopted by the
Lutheran divines. The precise point of dispute between the par-
ties was " An homo Christus in Deum assumtus in statu exinani-
tionis tanquam rex prjesens cuncta licet latenter gubernarit ? "
This tlie one party affirmed and the other denied. The one made
omnipresence and dominion the necessary consequence of the hy-
1 Formula Concordice, Art. viii. 27; Hase, Libri SymboUci, p. 768.
2 Art. VIII. 74; Ibid. p. 782. 8 Art. viii. 26; Ibid. p. 767.
624 PART m. Ch. xn. — humiliation of christ.
postatical union ; the other, while admitting the actual potential
possession of the divine attributes by the human nature as a conse-
quence of its union with the divine, regarded their use as depend-
ent on the divine will. It is conceivable that power should be
dependent on the will, and therefore in relation to that attribute
the distinction between the possession and use might be admitted ;
but no such distinction is possible in reference to the attribute of
omnipresence. If that perfection belonged to the human nature of
Christ (to his body and soul), in virtue of the hypostatical union,
it must have been omnipresent from the moment that this union
was consummated. This is involved in the very statement of the
doctrine of the hypostatical union as given by the Lutheran divines.
Thus Gerhard ^ says, " Neque enim pars parti, sed totus Xdyos toti
carni et tota caro toti Aoyw est unita ; ideo propter vTroo-rao-ews ravro-
Trjra kol tmv <f)V(T€(iiv TrtpL^^wprja-Lv, Xoyos ita prassens est cami et caro ita
prsesens est tw Aoyw, ut nee Xoyos sit extra carnem nee caro extra
Xdyov, sed ubicunque est Xdyos, ibi etiam praesentissimam sibi habet
camem, quippe quam in personae unitatem assumsit : et ubicun-
que est caro, ibi prsesentissimum sibi habet tov Xo'yov, quippe in cujus
hypostasin est assumta. Quemadmodum Xdyos non est extra suam
deitatem, cujus est hypostasis : sic etiam non est extra suam car-
nem, essentia quidem finitam, in X6yw tamen personaliter subsisten-
tem. Ut enim t<3 Xdyu propria est sua deitas per aeternam a Patre
generationem : sic eidem tw Xdyw propria facta est caro per unionem
personalem."
According to the Lutheran system, therefore, the subject of the
humiliation was the human nature of Christ, and consisted essen-
tially in the voluntary abstaining from the exercise and manifesta-
tion of the divine attributes with which it was imbued and inter-
penetrated. According to the Reformed doctrine it was He who
was equal with God who emptied Himself in assuming the fashion
of a man, and this divine person thus clothed in our nature hum-
bled Himself to be obedient even unto death. It is therefore of the
eternal Son of whom all that is taught of the humiliation of Christ
is to be predicated. This is clearly the doctrine of the Apostle in
Philippians ii. 6-8. It is the person who thought it no robbery to
be equal with God, of whom it is said, (1.) That He made Him-
self of no reputation (eauror eVeVowc). (2.) That this was done by his
taking upon Himself the form of a servant, being made in the like-
ness of men. (3.) That being thus incarnate, or found in fashion
as a man, He humbled Himself by being obedient unto death, even
1 Loci Theohgici, iv. vii. 121; edit. Tubingen, 1764, vol. iii. p. 428.
§5.] fflS DEATH AND BURIAL. 625
the death of the cross. In this matter, as characteristically on all
other points of cToctrine, the Reformed Church adheres to the sim-
ple statements of the Scriptures, and abstains from the attempt to
bring those doctrines within the grasp of the understanding.
The modern theologians, of whom Ebrard is a representative, in
discarding the Church doctrine of two natures (in the sense of
substances) in Christ, and in making the incarnation consist in a
voluntary self-limitation, are necessarily led into a theory as to the
humiliation of Christ at variance with both the Lutheran and Re-
formed views on that subject. According to this modern doctrine
the Eternal Son of God did not assume a human nature, in the
Church sense of those words, but He became a man. His infinite
intellect was reduced to the limits of the intellect of human intel-
ligence, to be gradually developed as in the case of other men.
His omnipotence was reduced to the limits of human power. His
omnipresence was exchanged for limitation to a definite portion of
space. He did not, however, as stated above, when treating of the
doctrine of Christ's person, cease to be God. According to this
theory the incarnation resulted, as Ebrard says,^ " In Christ's
being a man. (1.) So far as his will is concerned, in statu integ-
ritatis, i. e., as Adam was before the fall, in a state to choose be-
tween good and evil. (2.) So far as natural endowments are con-
cerned, with all the powers pertaining to humanity, which lay
undeveloped in the first Adam (3.) And as concerns his
ability dominant over the laws of nature in the present disordered
state of nature. Thus the eternal Son of God," he says, " had
reduced himself, so that as God he willed, having assumed the
form of man, to exert his activity only as man The exer-
cise of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, .... had been
to renounce his humanity His act of self-limitation in thus
reducing himself to the limitations of humanity, is the KeVwo-ts ; his
voluntary submission to pain, shame, and death, is the TaTretVwcrts
spoken of by the Apostle in Philippians ii. 6-8 : but both are in-
cluded in the wider sense of his humiliation."
1 Dogmalik, ii. ii. 359 ; edit. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ii. p. 32.
VOL. II. 40
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EXALTATION OF CHRIST.
According to our standards the exaltation of Christ includes, —
(1.) His resurrection. (2.) His ascension. (3.) His sitting
at the right hand of God. (4.) His coming to judge the world
at the last day.
§ 1. Resurrection of Christ.
The resurrection of Christ is not only asserted in the Scriptures,
but it is also declared to be the fundamental truth of the gospel.
"If Christ be not risen," says the Apostle, "then is our preach-
ing vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Cor. xv. 14). " If
Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins "
(verse 17). It may be safely asserted that the resurrection of
Christ is at once the most important, and the best authenticated
fact in the history of the world.
(1.) It was predicted in the Old Testament. (2.) It was fore-
told by Christ Himself. (3.) It was a fact admitting of easy veri-
fication. (4.) Abundant, suitable, and frequently repeated evi-
dence was afforded of its actual occurrence. (5.) The witnesses
to the fact that Christ was seen alive after his death upon the
cross, were numerous, competent, and on every account worthy of
confidence. (6.) Their sincerity of conviction was proved by the
sacrifices, even that of life, which their testimony entailed upon
them. (7.) Their testimony was confirmed by God bearing wit-
ness together with them (^crvviTriixaprvpovvTos rov 6eov, Heb. ii. 4), in
signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy
Ghost. (8.) That testimony of the Spirit is continued to the
present time and granted to all the true children of God, for the
Spirit bears witness to the truth in the heart and conscience. (9.)
The fact of Christ^s resurrection has been commemorated by a
religious observance of the first day of the week from its occur-
rence to the present time. (10.) The effects produced by his gos-
pel, and the change which it has effected in the state of the world,
admit of no other rational solution than the truth of his death and
I
§ 1.] KESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 627
subsequent resurrection. The Christian Church is his monument.
All believers are his witnesses.
The importance of Christ's resurrection arises, —
1. From the circumstance that all his claims, and the success of
his work, rest on the fact that He rose again from the dead. If He
rose, the gospel is true. If He did not rise, it is false. If He rose.
He is the Son of God, equal with the Father, God manifest in the
flesh ; the Salvator Hominum ; the Messiah predicted by the
prophets ; the prophet, priest, and king of his people ; his sacrifice
has been accepted as a satisfaction to divine justice, and his blood
as a ransom for many.
2. On his resurrection depended the mission of the Spirit, with-
out which Christ's work had been in vain.
3. As Christ died as the head and representative of his people,
his resurrection secures and illustrates theirs. As He lives, they
shall live also. If He remained under the power of death, there
is no source of spiritual life to men ; for He is the vine, we are
the branches ; if the vine be dead the branches must be dead
also.
4. If Christ did not rise, the whole scheme of redemption is a
failure, and all the predictions and anticipations of its glorious
results for time and for eternity, for men and for angels of every
rank and order, are proved to be chimeras. " But now is Christ
risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept."
Therefore the Bible is true from Genesis to Revelation. The
kingdom of darkness has been overthrown. Satan has fallen like
lightning from heaven ; and the triumph of truth over error, of
good ov§r evil, of happiness over misery, is forever secured.
Nature of Chrisfs Resurrection Body.
1. The identity of the body in which Christ rose with that
which expired upon the cross, was proved by indubitable evidence.
It retained even the print of the nails which had pierced his hands
and his feet. Nevertheless it was changed. To what extent, how-
ever, is not clearly made known. Tiie facts recorded in the sa-
cred history bearing on the nature of the Lord's hodj during the
period between his resurrection and ascension are, (a.) That
it was not at first clearly recognized as the same. Mary Magda-
lene mistook Him for the gardener. (John xx. 15.) The two dis-
ciples whom He joined on their way to Emmaus, did not recognize
Him until He was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
(Luke xxiv. 31.) When He appeared to the disciples on the shore
628 PART m. Ch. Xin. — the exaltation of CHRIST.
of the Sea of Tiberias they did not know who He was, until the
miraculous draft of fishes taken at his command revealed Him.
(John xxi. 7.) (6.) It appeared suddenly in the midst of his dis-
ciples in a room of which the doors were shut. (John xx. 19, and
Luke xxiv. 36.) (c.) Nevertheless it was the same material body
having " flesh and bones." That the appearance recorded in
Luke xxiv, 36 was preternatural may be inferi'ed from the effect
which it produced upon the disciples : " They were terrified and
affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit." Our Lord
reassured them saying, " Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I
myself: handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones
as ye see me have." It appears from the transfiguration of Christ
that his body while here on earth, was capable of passing from one
state to another without losing its identity.
2. Such was the state of our Lord's body during the forty days
subsequent to his resurrection. It then passed into its glorified
state. What that state is we know only so far as may be learned
from what the Apostle teaches from the nature of the bodies with
which believers are to be invested after the resui'rection. Those
bodies, we are told, are to be like Christ's " glorious body."
(Phil. iii. 21.) A description of the one is therefore a description
of the other. That description is found in the contrast between
the present body and that which the believer is to inhabit after the
resurrection. The one is a o-w/xa ij/vxi-kov, and the other a a-wfj-a ttvcv-
fiartKoy. The one is adapted to the ij/vxv (principle of animal life)
and to the present state of existence ; the other to the ■n-t'ev/xa
(the rational and immortal principle) and to the future state of
existence. The change which the " natural body " is to un-
dergo in becoming a " spiritual body " is thus described. " It is
sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruption : it is sown in dis-
honour ; it is raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised
in power: " in one word, " It is sown a natui'al body ; it is raised a
spiritual body." (1 Cor. xv. 42-41.) It is still a body and there-
fore material, retaining all the essential properties of matter. It is
extended. It occupies space. It has a definite form, and that a
human form. It was seen b}' Paul on his way to Damascus and
upon other occasions, and by John as recorded in the Apocalypse,
as well as by the dying martyr Stephen. Nevertheless it is no
longer " flesh and blood, " for " flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God." Flesh and blood are from their nature corrup-
tible; and so the apostle adds, "neither doth corruption inherit in-
corruption." Hence " this corruptible must put on incorruption,
§ 1.] RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 629
and this mortal must put on immortality." (1 Cor. xv. 50-53.)
The future body will not be subject to the wants, the infirmities,
or the passions which belong to the present state of existence.
" In the resurrection tliey neither marry, nor are given in marriage,
but are as the angels of God in heaven." (Matt. xxii. 30.) The
saints are to be like angels, not in being incorporeal, but as being
immortal, and not needing reproduction for the continuance of
their race.
The risen body of Christ, therefore, as it now exists in heaven,
although retaining its identity with his body while here on earth,
is glorious, incorruptible, immortal, and spiritual. It still occupies
a definite portion of space, and retains all the essential properties
of a body.
The efficient Agent in the Resurrection of Christ.
In numerous passages of Scripture the resurrection of our Lord
is referred to God as God or to the Father. The same person who
in the second Psalm says, " Thou art my Son," is addressed in the
sixteenth Psalm by that Son, " Thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell ; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption."
In Romans vi. 4, it is said, that Christ " was raised up from the
dead by the glory of the Father ; " so also in Acts ii. 24, " Whom
God hath raised up." In Acts xiii. 30, it is said, " God raised him
from the dead." So in Ephesians i. 19, 20, we are told that sin-
ners are converted by the same mighty power " which wrought
in Christ, when he raised him from the dead." In other passages,
however, it is said to be the work of Christ himself. Our Lord
speaking of his body said, " Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up." (John ii. 19.) And again, John x. 17,
18, " I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay
it down, and I have power to take it again." In Romans viii. 11,
according to the reading adopted by Tischendorf, the resurrection
of Chi'ist is, constructively at least, referred to the Holy Spirit.
This diverse reference of the same act to the several persons of
the Trinity is in accordance with the common usage of the Scrip-
tures. The three persons of the Godhead being the same in sub-
stance, the act of the one ad extra, is the act of the others. Any
external divine act, i. e., any act terminating externally, is an act
of the Godhead ; and therefore may, with equal propriety, be Be-
ferred to either of the divine persons. " What things soever he
[the Father] doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." (John
630 PART m. Ch. XIII. — the exaltation of CHRIST.
V. 19.) All, therefore, that the Scriptures teach on this subject is
that Christ was raised by the divine power. The Lutherans hold
that Christ rose by the power of his human nature, to which divine
attributes had, in the act of incarnation, been communicated. All
the miracles of Christ, as before stated, according to their view of
his person, were the works of his human nature distinctively, and
so of course the crowning miracle of his resurrection.
§ 2. Ascension of Christ.
The next step in the exaltation of Christ was his ascension to
heaven. In Mark xvi. 19, it is recorded that after Jesus had
spoken unto his disciples, " He was received up into heaven." In
Luke xxiv. 50, 51, " He led them out as far as to Bethany, and he
lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while
he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into
heaven." The most detailed account of our Lord's ascension is
found in the first chapter of the Acts. Tiiere the last words of
Christ to the Apostles are recorded, and it is added, " When he had
spoken these tilings, while they beheld, he was taken up ; and a
cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked
steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold two men stood
by them in white apparel ; which also said, Ye men of Galilee,
why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? This same Jesus, which is
taken up ffom you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen him go into heaven." (Acts i. 9-11.) From these ac-
coiuits it appears, (1.) That the ascension of Christ was of his
whole person. It was the Theanthropos, the Son of God clothed
in our nature, having a true body and a reasonable soul, who as-
cended. (2.) That the ascension was visible. The disciples wit-
nessed the whole transaction. They saw the person of Christ
gradually rise from the earth, and " go up " until a cloud hid Him
from their view. (3.) It was a local transfer of his person from
one place to another ; from earth to heaven. Heaven is therefore
a place. In what part of the universe it is located is not revealed.
But according to the doctrine of Scripture it is a definite portion
of space where God specially manifests his presence, and where
He is surrounded by his angels (who not being infinite, cannot be
ubiquitous), and by the spirits of the just made perfect. It is true
that the word " heaven," both in the Old and New Testaments, is
used in various senses, (1) Sometimes for the region of the atmos-
phere ; as when the Bible speaks of the clouds, or birds of heaven,
or of the rain as descending from heaven. (2.) Sometimes for
§ 2.] ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 631
the region of the stars, which are called the hosts of heaven.
(3.) Sometimes it means a state, and answers to some of the
senses of the phrase, " kingdom of heaven." The believer is said
to be delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the
kingdom of God's dear Son. We are therefore said even in this
world to be " in heaven," as in Ephesians ii. 6, where it is said,
God " hath raised us up together (with Christ), and made us sit
together (eV tois £7rou/oaitots= ev tw oipavw^ agreeably to the constant
usage of that Epistle) in heavenly places," ^. e., in heaven. In the
same sense we are said to be, " the citizens of heaven ; " that is,
the TToAt? in which we dwell, and to the rights and privileges of
which we are entitled. (Phil. iii. 20.)^ The Apostle's words
are, rnxwv to TroXtTiv^xa Iv ovpavot.<i vTrapx^i-, " Heaven is the city
of which we are the citizens, or, in which is our citizenship."
(4.) But, fourthly, it means the place where God dwells, where
the angels and the spirits of the just are congregated ; whence
Christ came, and to which He has returned. He told his disciples
that He went to prepare a place for them. (John xiv. 2.) In this
sense the word is used when the Bible speaks of God as our Father
" in Heaven ; " or of heaven as his throne, his temple, his dwell-
ing place. If Christ has a true body, it must occupy a definite
portion of space. And where Christ is, there is the Christian's
heaven.
In opposition to this Scriptural and generally accepted view of
the ascension of Christ, as a transfer from one place to another,
from the earth, as one sphere of the universe, to heaven, another,
and equally definite locality, the Lutherans made it a mere change
of state, of which chang-e the human nature of Christ was the sub-
ject. Prior to his resurrection, the human nature of our Lord,
although really possessed of the attributes of omnipresence, omnis-
cience, and omnipotence, voluntarily forbore the exercise and mani-
festation of these divine perfections. His ascension was his enter-
ing on their full enjoyment and exercise. He passed from the
condition of an ordinary man to being as a man (as to his soul and
body) everywhere present, and everywhere the supreme ruler.
The heaven He entered is immensity. Thus the " Form of Con-
cord " ^ says, " Ex hac unione et naturarum communione humana
natura habet illam exaltationem, post resurrectionem a mortuis,
super omnes creaturas in coelo et in terra, quae revera nihil aliud
est, quam quod Christus formam servi prorsus deposuit ; hunianam
1 See Meyer on Philippians iii. 20, for a statement of his view on this subject.
2 Art. VIII. 26; Hase, Libri Symbolici, pp. 767, 768.
632 PART m. Ch. Xm. - exaltation of CHRIST.
vero naturam non deposuit, sed in omnem aBternitatem retinet, et
ad plenam possessionem et divinae majestatis usurpationem secun-
dam assumptam humanam naturam evectus est. Earn vero majes-
tatem statim in sua conceptione, etiam in utero matris habuit : sed
ut Apostolus Phil. ii. 8 [7], loquitur, seipsum exinanivit, eamque,
ut D. Lutherus docet, in statu suse humiliationis secreto habuit,
neque earn semper, sed quoties ipsi visum fuit, usurpavit. Jam
vero, postquam non communi ratione, ut alius quispiam sanctus in
coelos ascendit, sed ut Apostolus, Eph. iv. 10, testatur, super omnes
coelos ascendit, et revera omnia implet, et ubique non tantum ut
Deus, verum etiam ut homo, praesens dominatur et regnat a mari
ad mare et usque ad terminos terrae." Luther argued that as
God's right hand at which Christ in his glorified body sits, is every-
where, so that body must be everywhere. In the " Form of Con-
cord " ^ it is said, Dextera Dei " non est certus aliquis .... locus,
sed nihil aliud est, nisi omnipotens Dei virtus, quag coelum et ter-
ram implet." Gerhard ^ presents the same view, " Qualis est Dei
dextra, taliter quoque sessio ad dextram Dei intelHgenda. Jam
vero dextra Dei non est locus aliquis corporeus, circumscriptus,
limitatus, definitus, sed est infinita Dei potestas ac praesentissima
ejus majestas in coelo et terra, est praBsentissimum illud dominium,
quo Deus omnia conservat et gubernat." Whence it is inferred
that the soul and body of Christ must have a like ubiquity. The
omnipresence of God, however, is not to be conceived of as infi-
nite extension, for extension is a property of matter ; so the Lu-
theran theologians do not hold the infinite extension of the body
of Christ. They merely say that He is present as God is present
everywhere in knowledge and power. But a thing cannot act where
it is not; and therefore omnipresence of knowledge and power im-
plies omnipresence as to substance. And consequently as Christ
in both natures is everywhere active. He must in both natures be
everywhere present. Augustine found occasion to write against
this notion of the ubiquity of the humanity of Christ, even in his
age of the Church, " Noli itaque dubitare, ibi nunc esse hominem
Christum Jesum, unde venturus est. . . . Et sic venturus est, ilia
angelica voce testante, quemadmodum ire visus est in coelum, i. e.,
in eadem carnis forma atque substantia; cui profecto immortalita-
tem dedit, naturam non abstulit. Secundum banc formam non est
putandus ubique difFusns. Cavendum est enim ne ita divinitatem
astruamus hominis ut veritatem corporis auferamus. Non est autem
1 Art. vui. 28; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 7fi8.
2 Loci Theologici, iv. xii. 220, vol. iii. pp. 509, 510.
§2.] ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 633
consequens ut quod in Deo est, ita sit ubique, ut Deus ^ . . . Nam
spatia locorum tolle corporibus, nusquam erunt, et quia nusquam
erunt, nee erunt. Tolle ipsa corpora qualitatibus corporum, non
erit ubi sint, et ideo necesse est ut non sint ^ . . . Christum autem
Dominum nostrum unigenitum Dei filium aequalem Patri, eundem-
que hominis filium quo major est Pater, et ubique totum praesen-
tem esse non dubites tanquam Deum, et in eodem templo Dei esse
tanquarn inhabitantem Deum, et in loco aliquo coeli propter veri
corporis modum." ^
The modern theory which makes the incarnation of the Son of
God to consist in his laying aside " the existence-form " of God,
and, by a process of self-limitation assuming that of a man, of
necessity modifies the view taken of his exaltation and ascension.
That ascension is admitted to be a transfer from one portion of
space to another, from earth to heaven. It is also admitted that
our Lord now as a man occupies a definite portion of space. He is
as to his human nature in one place and not everywhere. But his
present existence-form is still human and only human. On this
point Ebrard says. That the only begotten Son of God became a
human soul, and formed itself a body in the womb of the Virgin
Mary, and was born of her as a man. In the human nature thus
assumed there were two elements. The one including^ all the es-
sentials of humanity without which man is no longer man. The
other includes only what is accidental and variable ; as for example,
weakness, subjection to death, and other evils consequent on sin.
All these on his ascension he laid aside, and now dwells in heaven
as a glorified man (verkliirter Mensch). He has laid aside forever
the existence-form of God, and assumed that of man in perpetuity,
in which form by his Spirit He governs the Church and the world.
Locally, therefore. He is absent from the world, but He is dynamic-
ally present to all his people in his present human existence-form.
On this last mentioned point he quotes with approbation the lan-
guage of Polanus : * " Ideo corpus Ciiristi non est jam in terra,
nedum ubique. Etsi autem Christus corpore suo non sit jam in
terra, tamen est etiam conjunctus et praesens corpori nostro secun-
dum carnem, sed non loco ; sicut caput uniuscujusque hominis
non est eo loco quo pedes, et tamen est illis suo modo unitum.
Proinde adest Christus ecclesise suae non tantum secundum divi-
nam sed etiam secundum humanam naturam, verum spiritualiter,
1 Epistola CLXxxvii. (57) [iii.] 10, ad Dardanum, Woi-ks\ edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1836,
vol. ii. pp. 1021, d, 1022, a. ^
2 Ibid. vi. 18; p. 1025,6.
2 Ibid. vi. 18: ]) 1025, e. " Ibid. xiii. V \ p. 1038, a.
* Syntagma Tlieologia, VI., xxv. edit. Francofurti et Hanoviae, 1655, p. 762, a.
634 PART III. Ch. Xm. — exaltation of CHRIST.
sicut caput membris, quibus unitum est et quae vivificat." This
dynamic presence of Ciirist as to his liuman nature and even as
to his body, which Calvin asserted in reference to the Lord's
Suj)per, has no special connection with Ebrard's doctrine of the
incarnation. It is held by those who believe that the Eternal Son
of God became man by taking to Himself a true body and a rea-
sonable soul, and so was, and continueth to be God and man in
two distinct natures, and one person forever. The doctrine in
question has no doubt a form of truth in it. We are present with
Christ, in a certain sense, in reference to his human, as well as in
reference to his divine nature. The person to whom we are
present, or, who is present with us, is theanthropic. We have all
the advantage of his human sympathy and affection ; and the form
of divine life which we derive from Him comes from Him as God
still clothed in our nature. All this may be admitted without ad-
mitting that the Eternal Son " became a human soul ; " that He
laid aside the existence-form of God, and assumed for eternity, that
of man. If this be so, then He is a man and nothing more. If
an adult man, by a process of self-limitation, or self-contraction, as-
sumes the existence-form of an infant, he is an infant, and ceases
to be an adult man. If he assumes the existence-form of an
idiot, he is an idiot ; or of a brute, he has only the instincts and
sagacity of a brute. If, therefore, the Logos became man by self-
contraction, He is no longer God.
According to the teaching of Scripture the ascension of Christ
was necessary, —
1. In the first place He came from heaven. Heaven was
his home. It was the appropriate sphere of his existence. His
presence makes heaven, and therefore until this earth is purified
from all evil, and has undergone its great process of regeneration,
so as to become a new heavens and a new earth, this world is not
suited for the Redeemer's abode in his state of exaltation.
2. It was necessary that as our High Priest He should, after
offering Himself as a sacrifice, pass through the heavens, to appear
before God in our behalf. An essential part, and that a perma-
nent one, of his priestly office was to be exercised in heaven. He
there makes constant intercession for his people. As He died for
our sins, He rose for our justification. All this was typified under
the old dispensation. The victim was slain without in the court
of the temple ; the high priest bore the blood with much incense
within the veil and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat. What the
liigh priest did in the earthly temple, it was necessary for the High
§3.] CHRIST'S SESSION AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD. 635
Priest of our profession to do in the temple made without hands,
eternal in the heavens. This is set forth with all clearness in the
Epistle to the Hebrews.
3. It was expedient, our Lord said, that He should go away ;
" for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ;
but if I depart, I will send him unto you." (John xvi. 7.) It was
necessary that redemption should not only be acquired but applied.
Men if left to themselves would have remained in their sins, and
Christ had died in vain. The great blessing which the prophets
predicted as characteristic of the Messianic period, was the effusion
of the Holy Spirit. To secure that blessing for the Church his
ascension was necessary. He was exalted to give I'epentance and
the remission of sins ; to gather his people from all nations and
during all ages until the work was accomplished. His throne in
the heavens was the proper place whence the work of saving men,
through the merits of his death, was to be carried on.
4. Again our Lord told his sorrowing disciples, " I go to prepare
a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there
ye may be also." (John xiv. 2, 3.) His ascension, therefore,
was necessary for the completion of his work.
§ 3. Sitting at the Right Hand of Grod.
This is the next step in the exaltation of our Lord. He rose
from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right
hand of God ; that is, was associated with Him in glory and do-
minion. The subject of this exaltation was the Theantliropos ;
not the Logos specially or distinctively ; not the human nature
exclusively ; but the theantliropic person. When a man is ex-
alted It is not the soul in distinction from the body ; nor the body
in distinction from the soul, but the whole person.
The ground of Christ's exaltation is twofold : the possession of
divine attributes by which He was entitled to divine honour and
was qualified to exercise absolute and universal dominion ; and
secondly, his mediatorial work. Both these are united in Hebrews
i. 3. It is there said, that Christ " sat down on the right liand of
the Majesty on high ; " first (wv, being, i. e.), because He is the
brightness of the Father's glory and his express Image, and sustains
the universe by the word of his power ; and secondly, because by
the sacrifice of Himself, He made purification for our sins. So also
in Philippians ii. 6-11, where we are taught that it was He who
existed In the form of God and was equal with God, who humbled
636 PART III. Ch. XIIL — exaltation OF CHRIST.
Himself to be obedient unto death even the death of the cross, and
therefore, for tliose two reasons, " God also hath highly exalted
him, and given him a name which is above every name : that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things in earth, and things under the earth." In Ephesians i.
20-22, it is saifl, God raised Christ from the dead " and set him at
liis own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all princi-
pality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that
is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come ;
and hath put all things under his feet." This latter passage, taken
from the eighth Psalm, is repeatedly quoted to prove the absolutely
universal dominion of the risen Saviour, as in Hebrews ii. 8 :
" In that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that
is not put under him." And also 1 Corinthians xv. 27, when it is
said, " All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is ex-
cepted, which did put all things under him." No creature there-
fore is excepted. This also is what our Lord Himself teaches,
•when He says, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth." (Matt, xxviii. 18.) Heaven and earth in Scriptural lan-
guage, is the whole universe. In 1 Peter iii. 22, it is said, " Who
is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God ; angels and
authorities and powers (z. e., all rational creatures) being made sub-
ject unto him." In the prophetic books of the Old Testament it
was predicted that the Messiah should be invested with this uni-
versal dominion. (See Ps. ii., xlv., Ixxii., ex. ; Isa. ix. 67 ; Dan.
vii. 14, etc.) That such authority and power could not be in-
trusted to a mere creature is plain from the nature of the case.
Divine perfections, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, as
well as infinite wisdom and goodness, are requisite for the effectual
and righteous administration of a dominion embracing all orders
of beings, all creatures rational and irrational, extending over the
reason and conscience as well as over the external world. On this
point the Scriptures are explicit. They teach expressly that to no
angel, i. <?., to no rational creature, as the term angel includes all
intelligences higher than man, hath God ever said, " Sit on my
right hand." (Heb. i. IJ^.) All angels, all rational creatures, are
commanded to worship Him.
This universal dominion is exercised by the Theanthropos. It
is vain for us to speculate on the relation of the divine and human
natures in the acts of this supreme ruler. We cannot understand
the relation between the soul and the body in the voluntary exer-
cises in which both are agents, as when we write or speak. We
§ 2.] CHRIST'S SESSION AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD. 637
know that such acts are neither exclusively mental nor exclusively
corporeal ; but how the two elements are combined, passes our
comprehension. It is most unreasonable, therefore, and presumptu-
ous, for us to endeavour to make intelligible to our feeble under-
standings, how tlie divine and human in the person of our Lord,
cooperate in full accordance with the nature of each. In the case
of our own voluntary exercises, we know that the attributes of the
mind are not transferred to the body ; much less are those of the
body transferred to the mind. In like manner we know that the
attributes of Christ's divine nature are not transferred to his hu-
man nature, nor those of his humanity to his divinity. It is enough
for us to know that this supreme ruler of the universe is a perfect
man as well as a perfect God ; that He still has all human sym-
pathies and affections, and can be touched with a sense of our
infirmities. That a person in whom dwells all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily, and who is filled with all the love, tenderness,
compassion, meekness, and forbearance, which Christ manifested
while here on earth, has all power in heaven and earth committed
to his hands, and is not far from any one of us, is an unspeakable
delight to all his people.
In this exaltation of Christ to supreme dominion was fulfilled the
prediction of the Psalmist, as the organ of the Holy Ghost, that
all things, the whole uitiverse, according to the interpretation of
the Apostle as given in Hebrews ii. 8, and 1 Corinthians xv. 27,
were to be put under subjection to man. In the former j)assage
the Apostle argues thus: The world to come of which he spoke,
i. e., the gospel dispensation, the world during the Messianic period,
was not put under subjection to angels, for the Scriptures say that
all things are put under man. And when it is said all things (ra
Travra) are put under Him, nothing is excej)ted. We do not yet,
however, see all things put under man as man ; but we do see the
man Christ Jesus, on account of the suffering of death, crowned
with this absolutely universal dominion. It is, therefore, at the
feet of a man in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead, that all
principalities and powers bow themselves in willing subjection and
adoring love. And it is at the feet of this once crucified man that
all the redeemed are to cast down their crowns.
This absolute dominion has been committed to Christ as medi-
ator. He who is over all is the head of the Church ; it is for the
Church, for the consummation of the work of redemption that as
the God-man He has been thus exalted over all created beings.
(Eph. i. 22 ; Col. i. 17, 18 ; 1 Cor. xv. 25-28.) Having been com-
638 PART in. Ch. xni. — exaltation of christ.
mitted to Him for a special purpose, this universal dominion as
Mediator will be relinquished when that purpose is accomplished.
He will reign until all his enemies are put under his feet. And
when the last enemy is subdued He will deliver up this kingdom
unto the Father, and reign forever as King over the redeemed.
§ 4. Chrisfs coming to judge the World.
This is the last step in his exaltation. He who was arraigned as
a criminal at the bar of Pilate ; who was unrighteously condemned,
and who amid cruel mockings, was crucified with malefactors, is to
come again with power and great glory ; before Him are to be
gathered all nations and all the generations of men, to receive from
his lips their final sentence. He will then be exalted before all
intelligences, as visibly their sovereign judge.
What the Scriptures teach on this subject is, (1.) That Christ
is to come again. (2.) That this coming is to be personal, visible,
and glorious. (3.) That the object of his second advent is to
judge the world. (4.) That the persons to be judged are the
quick and the dead, i. e., those then alive and those who died be-
fore his appearing. (5.) That the rule of judgment will be the
law of God, either as written on the heart or as revealed in his
Word. Those havincj the written revelation will be iudged by it:
those who have had no such external revelation, will be judged
according to the light they have actually enjoyed. (6.) That the
ground of judgment will be the deeds done in the body. (7.) That
the sentence to be pronounced will be final, fixing the destiny of
those concerned for eternity.
This whole subject belongs to the department of Eschatology, to
which its more detailed consideration must be deferred. It is in-
troduced here simply as connected with the exaltation of Christ,
of which it is to be the culminating point.
CHAPTER XIV.
VOCATION.
§ 1. Scriptural Usage of the Word.
The Scriptures clearly teach that the several persons of the
adorable Trinity sustain an economical relation to the work of
man's redemption. To the Father is referred the plan itself, the
selection of its objects, and the mission of the Son to carry the
gracious purpose into effect. To the Son, the accomplishment of
all that is requisite to render the salvation of sinful men consistent
with the perfections and law of God, and to secure the final re-
demption of those given to Him by the Father. The special work
of the Spirit is the application of the redemption purchased by
Christ. Such is the condition of men since the ftill, that if left to
themselves they would continue in their rebellion and refuse the
offers of reconciliation with God. Christ then had died in vain.
To secure the accomplishment of the promise that He should " see
of the travail of his soul and be satisfied," the Holy Spirit so oper-
ates on the chosen people of God, that they are brought to repent-
ance and faith, and thus made heirs of eternal life, through Jesus
Christ their Lord.
This work of the Spirit is in the Scriptures called Vocation. It
is one of the many excellences of the Reformed Theology that it
retains, as far as possible, Scriptural terms for Scriptural doctrines.
It is proper that this should be done. Words and thoughts are so
intimately related that to change the former, is to modify, more or
less seriously, the latter. And as the words of Scripture are the
words of the Spirit, it is becoming and important that they should
be retained.
The act of the Spirit by which men are brought into saving
union with Christ, is expressed by the word kX^o-i?, vocation. As
in Hebrews iii. 1, " Partakers of the heavenly calling." Ephesians
i. 18, " Hope of his calling." Ephesians iv. 1, "Walk worthy of
the vocation wherewith ye are called." Ephesians iv. 4, " In one
hope of your calling." 2 Timothy i. 9, "Hath .... called us
with an holy calling." 2 Peter i. 10, " Make your calHng and elec-
640 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
tion sure," etc., etc. The verb used to express this act of the
Spirit is KaXeiv, to call. Romans viii. 30 : " Whom he did predes-
tinate, them he also called : and, whom he called, them he also
justified." Also Romans ix. 11 and 24. 1 Corinthians i. 9: "By
whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son." Verse 26 :
" Ye see your calling brethren, how that not many wise men after
the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." Gala-
tians i. 6 : " Him that called you." Verse 15, " It pleased God,
who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his
grace." 1 Thessalonians ii. 12, " Who hath called you unto his
kingdom and glory." 1 Thessalonians v. 24, " Faithful is he that
calleth you." 2 Thessalonians ii. 14, " Whereunto he called you
by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ." 1 Peter ii. 9, " Who hath called you out of darkness
into his marvellous light." 1 Peter v. 10, " Who hath called us
unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus." 2 Peter i. 3, " Through
the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue."
Those who are the subjects of this saving influence of the Spirit,
are designated " the called." Romans i. 6, " The called of Jesus
Christ." Romans viii. 28, " To them who are the called accord-
ino- to his purpose." To one class of the hearers of the gospel,
the Apostle says (1 Cor. i. 24), Christ is a stumbling-block,
and to another foolishness, " but unto them which are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of
God." Jude addresses his epistle to the " preserved in Jesus
Christ, and called." " The called,'' and " the elect," ol kXtjtol and
01 ckXcktoi, are convertible terms. Revelation xvii. 14, " The Lamb
.... is the Lord of lords, and King of kings : and they that are
with him are called, and chosen (/cAr/roi, koI ckXcktoi), and faithful."
So in 1 Corinthians i. 26, 27, Paul says, " Not many wise ....
are called: but God hath chosen the foolish .... to confound
the wise." In Hebrews ix. 15, it is said that Christ " is the medi-
ator of the New Testament, that .... they which are called
might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."
Such then is the established usage of Scripture. It is by a di-
vine call, that sinners are made partakers of the benefits of redemp-
tion. And the influence of the Spirit by which they are trans-
lated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's
dear Son, is a vocation, or effectual calling. The ground of this
usage is to be found in the Scriptural idea of God and of his rela-
tion to the world. He speaks and it is done. He said, Let there
be light, and light was. He calls the things that are not, and they
§ 2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 641
are. All effects of his power are produced by a word. As in the
external world He created all things by the word of his power ; so
all effects in the moral or spiritual world are accomplished by a
volition or a command. To call, therefore, in Scriptural language,
is to effect, to cause to be, or to occur. There are two things in-
volved in this form of expression. The one is, that God is the
author or cause of the effect, which occurs in consequence of his
call or command. The other is, that the efficiency to which the
effect is due is not in second causes. God in such cases may work
with means or without them, but in either event it is not through
them. In creation and miracles, for example, there is neither in-^
tervention nor concomitancy of causes. God spoke (or willed),
and the universe was. Our Lord said, Lazarus come forth, and
Lazarus lived. He said to the leper, I will, be thou clean. When
He put clay on the eyes of the blind man and bade him wash in
the pool of Siloam, the restoration of sight was in no degree due
to the properties of the clay or of the water. It was as truly the
effect of the immediate divine efficiency, as raising the dead by a
word. When, therefore, the Scriptures ascribe that subjective
change in the sinner by which he becomes a new creature, to the
call of God, it teaches that the effect is due not to natural or moral
causes, or to the man's own agency, but simply to the power of
God. Hence, as just said, to call is frequently in the Bible, to
effect, to cause to be. A people or an individual becomes by the
call of God that which the people or person is called to be. When
God called the Hebrews to be his people, they became his people.
When a man was called to be a prophet, he became a prophet.
When Paul was called to be an apostle, he became an apostle.
And those called to be saints become saints.
§ 2. The External Oall
The Scriptures, however, distinguish between this effectual call
and the external call addressed in the Word of God to all to whom
that word is made known. In this sense " many are called but
few are chosen." God said by his prophet (Isa. Ixv. 12), " When
I called, ye did not answer." And our Lord said, "I am not come
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Matt. ix. 13.)
This external call includes, (1.) A declaration of the plan of
salvation. (2.) The promise of God to save all who accede to the
terms of that plan. (3.) Command, exhortation, and invitation to
all to accept of the offered mercy. (4.) An exhibition of the
reasons which should constrain men to repent and believe, and thus
VOL. II. 4x
642 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
escape from the wrath to come. All this is included in the gospel.
For the gospel is a revelation of God's plan of saving sinners. It
contains the ])roniise, Whosoever shall call on the name of the
Lord shall be saved. Whosoever cometh unto me I will in no
wise cast out. In the gospel God commands all men everywhere
to repent and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. In the gospel
men are not only commanded but exhorted to return unto God in
the way of his appointment. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye
die, is the language which it addresses to all to whom its message
comes. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man
his thoughts : and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have
mei'cy upon him ; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
Look unto me all ye ends of the earth and be ye saved. The
gospel moreover addresses the reason, the conscience, the feelings,
the hopes and the fears of men ; and presents every consideration
which should determine rational and immortal beings to comply
with its gracious invitations.
This call is universal in the sense that it is addressed to all men
indiscriminately to whom the gospel is sent. It is confined to no
age, nation, or class of men. It is made to the Jew and Gentile,
to Barbarians and Scythians, bond and free ; to the learned and to
the ignorant; to the righteous and to the wicked ; to the elect and
to the non-elect. This follows from its nature. Being a ])rocla-
mation of the terms on which God is willing to save sinners, and
an exhibition of the duty of fallen men in relation to that plan, it
of necessity binds all those who are in the condition which the plan
contemplates. It is in this respect analogous to the moral law.
That law is a revelation of the duties binding all men in virtue of
their relation to God as their Creator and moral Governor. It
promises the divine favour to the obedient, and threatens wrath to
the disobedient. It therefore of necessity applies to all who sustain
the relation of rational and moral creatures to God. So also the
gospel being a revelation of the relation of fallen men to God as
reconciling the world unto Himself, comes to all belonging to the
class of fallen men.
The Scriptures, therefore, in the most explicit terms teach that
the external call of the gospel is addressed to all men. The com-
mand of Christ to his Church was to preach the gospel to every
creature. Not to irrational creatures, and not to fallen angels ;
these two classes are excluded by the nature and design of the gos-
pel. Further than this there is no limitation, so far as the present
state of existence is concerned. We are commanded to make the
§2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 643
offer of salvation througli Jesus to every human being on the face
of the earth. We have no right to exclude any man ; and no
man has any right to exclude himself. God so loved the world,
that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever be-lieveth in
Him might not perish but have everlasting life. The prediction
and promise in Joel ii. 32, " Wliosoever shall call on the name of
the Lord shall be delivered," is repeatedly renewed in the New
Testament, as in Acts ii. 21 ; Romans x. 13. David says (Psalm
Ixxxvi. 5), " Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive ; and
plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee." The
prophet Isaiah Iv. 1, gives the same general invitation: "Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money ; come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money, and without price." Our Lord's call is equally
unrestricted, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. xi. 28.) And the sacred
canon closes with the same gracious words, " The Spirit and the
bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let
him that is athirst, come : and whosoever will, let him take the
water of life freely." (Rev. xxii. 17.) The Apostles, therefore,
when they went forth in the execution of the commission which
they had received, preached the gospel to every class of men, and
assured every man whom they addressed, that if he would repent
and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ he should be saved. If,
therefore, any one holds any view of the decrees of God, or of the
satisfaction of Christ, or of any other Scriptural doctrine, which
hampers him in making this general offer of the gospel, he may be
sure that his views or his logical processes are wrong. The Apos-
tles were not thus hampered, and we act under the commission
given to them.
It is not Inconsistent with the Doctrine of Predestination.
This general call of the gospel is not inconsistent with the
doctrine of predestination. For predestination concerns only the
purpose of God to render effectual in particular cases, a call ad-
dressed to all. A general amnesty on certain conditions may be
offered by a sovereign to rebellious subjects, although he knows
that through pride or malice many will refuse to accept it ; and
even although, for wise reasons, he should determine not to con-
strain their assent, supposing that such influence over their minds
were within his power. It is evident from the nature of the call
that it has nothing to do with the secret purpose of God to grant
644 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
his effectual grace to some and not to others. All the call contains
is true. The plan of salvation is designed for men. It is adapted
to the condition of all. It makes ahundant provision for the salva-
tion of all. The promise of acceptance on the condition of faith is
made to all. And the motives and reasons which should constrain
obedience are brought to bear on every mind to which the call is
sent. According to the Augustinian scheme, the non-elect have
all the advantages and opportunities of securing their salvation,
that, according to any other scheme, are granted to mankind in-
discriminately. Augustinianism teaches that a plan of salvation
adapted to all men and adequate for the salvation of all, is freely
offered to the acceptance of all, although in the secret purpose of
God, he intended that it should have precisely the effect which in
experience it is found to have. He designed in its adoption to save
his own people, but consistently offers its benefits to all who are
willincr to receive them. More than this no anti- Augustinian can
demand.
It is Consistent with the Sincerity of Grod.
It is further said to be inconsistent with the sincerity of God, to
offer salvation to those whom He has predetermined to leave to
the just recompense of their sins. It is enough to say in answer
to this objection, so strenuously urged by Lutherans and Armini-
ans, that it bears with equal force against the doctrine of God's
foreknowledge, which they admit to be an essential attribute of
his nature. How can He offer salvation to those whom He fore-
knows will despise and reject it ; and when He also knows that
their guilt and condemnation will thereby be greatly aggravated.
There is no real difficulty in either case except what is purely
subjective. It is in us, in our limited and partial apprehensions ;
and in our inability to comprehend the ways of God, which are
past finding out. We cannot understand how God governs the
world and accomplishes his infinitely wise designs. We must be
satisfied with facts. Whatever actually is, it must be right for
God to permit to be. And it is no less evident that whatever He
permits to be, it must be right for Him to intend to permit. And
this is all that the Augustinian scheme, in obedience to the Word
of God, is constrained to assert. It is enough that the offer of sal-
vation through Jesus Christ, is to be made to every creature ; that
whosoever accepts that offer shall be saved ; and that for the salva-
tion of all, abundant provision has been made. What God's pur-
poses may be in instituting and promulgating this scheme of mercy,
has nothing to do with our duty as ministers in making the procla-
§ 2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 645
mation, or with our obligation and privilege as sinners in accepting
his proffered grace. If it is not inconsistent with the sincerity of
God to command all men to love Him, it is not inconsistent with
his sincerity to command them to repent and believe the gospel.
The Lutheran Doctrine.
The Lutherans from their anxiety to get rid of the sovereignty of
God in the dispensation of his grace, are led to hold that the gospel
offer is universal, not only in the sense above stated, in that the
command is given to the Church, to make it known to all men, but
that it has in some way been actually communicated to all. They
admit the difficulty of reconciling this assumption with the present
state of the world. They attempt to meet this difficulty by say-
ing, that at three different epochs the knowledge of the plan of
salvation was actually known to all men. First, when the promise
of redemption through the seed of the woman, was made to our
first parents. Secondly, in the days of Noah ; and thirdly, during
the age of the Apostles, by whom, it is assumed, the gospel was
carried to the ends of the world, even to the inhabitants of this
western continent. That this knowledge has since been lost, is to
be referred not to the purpose of God, but to the wilful ingratitude
and wickedness of the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the
heathen world. They refer also to the fact that the Church is as
a city set upon a hill ; that it does more or less attract the atten-
tion of the whole earth. All men have heard of Christians and of
Christianity ; and it is their own fault if they do not seek further
knowledge on the subject. It is very plain, however, that these
considerations do not touch the difficulty. The heathen are with-
out Christ and without God in the world. This is Paul's account
of their condition. It is in vain, therefore, for us to attempt to
show that they have the knowledge which the Apostle asserts they
do not possess, and which, as all history shows, does not exist
among them. The Lutheran divines feel the unsatisfactory nature
of their ow^n solution of this great problem. Gerhard, after re-
ferring to all possible sources of divine knowledge accessible to the
heathen, says,^ " Sed demus, in his et similibus exemplis speciali-
bus non posse nos exacte causas divinorum consiliorum exquirere
vel proponere ; non tamen ad absolutum aliquod reprobationis de-
cretum erit confugiendum sed adhaereamus firmiter pronunciatis
istis universalibus. 1 Tim. ii. 4 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 11." " The Sym-
bolical Books," says Schmid,^ "adhere to the simple proposition;
1 Loci Theologici, \oc. viii.; vii. 136, vol. iv. p. 191.
2 Dogmalik, 3rd edit. Frankfort on the Maine and Erlangen, 1853, p. 350.
646 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
' quod non tantum prsedicatio poenitentiai, venam etiam promissio
evangelii sit universalis, hoc est ad omnes homines pertineat,' "^
and that this vocatio is per verbum ; without attempting to recon-
cile these statements with the facts of experience.
The Call to Salvation is only through the Gospel.
The call in question is made only through the Word of God,
as heard or read. That is, the revelation of the plan of salvation
is not made by the works or by the providence of God ; nor by
the moral constitution of our nature, nor by the intuitions or de-
ductions of reason ; nor by direct revelation to all men everywhere
and at all times ; but only in the written Word of God. It is not
denied that God may, and in past ages certainly did, convey this
saving knowledge by direct revelation without the intervention of
any external means of instruction. Such was the fact in the case
of the Apostle Paul. And such cases, for all we know, may even
now occur. But these are miracles. This is not the ordinary
method. For such supernatural revelations of truth after its being
made known in the Scriptures and committed to the Church with
the command to teach all nations, we have no promise in the Scrip-
tures and no evidence from experience.
It has ever been, and still is, the doctrine of the Church univer-
sal in almost all its parts, that it is only in and through the Scrip-
tures that the knowledge necessary to salvation is revealed to men.
The Rationalists, as did the Pelagians, hold that what they call
" the light of nature," reveals enough of divine truth to secure
the return of the soul to God, if it be properly improved. And
many Arminians, as well as Mystics, hold that the supernatural
teaching of the Spirit is granted in sufficient measure to every man
to secure his salvation, if he yields himself up to its guidance. It
would be very agreeable to our natural feelings to believe this, as
it would be to believe that all men will be saved. But such is not
the doctrine of the Bible ; and it requires but little humility to
believe that God is better as well as wiser than man ; that his ways
are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts ; and
that whatever He ordains is best.
That the Scriptures do teach that saving knowledge is contained
only in the Bible, and consequently that those ignorant of its con-
tents, are ignorant of the way of salvation, is plain, —
1. Because the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Tes-
tament, constantly represent the heathen as in a state of fatal igno-
1 Formula ConcordicB, xi. 28 ; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 804.
§ 2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 647
ranee. They are declared by the ancient prophets to be afar off
from God ; to be the worsliippers of idols, to be sunk in sin. The
people of Israel were separated from other nations for the express
purpose of preserving the knowledge of the true religion. To
them were committed the oracles of God. In the New Testament
the same representation is given of their condition. It is said, They
know not God. The Apostle proves at length in the first chapter
of his Epistle to the Romans, that they are universally and justly
in a state of condemnation. He exhorts the Ephesians to call to
mind their condition before they received the gospel. They were
" without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and
without God, in the world." (Eph. ii. 12.) Such is the uniform
teaching of the Word of God. It is utterly inconsistent with
these representations, to assume that the heathen had such knowl-
edge of God either by tradition, or by inward revelation, as was
sufficient to lead them to holiness and God.
2. This doctrine follows also from the nature of the gospel. It
claims to be the only method of salvation. It takes for granted
that men are in a state of sin and condemnation, from which they
are unable to deliver themselves. It teaches that for the salvation
of men the Eternal Son of God assumed our nature, obeyed and
suffered in our stead, and having died for our sins, rose again for
our justification ; that, so far as adults are concerned, the intelli-
gent and voluntary acceptance of Christ as our God and Saviour
is the one indispensable condition of salvation ; that there is no
other name under heaven whereby men can be saved. It provides,
therefore, for a Church and a Ministry whose great duty it is to
make known to men this great salvation. All this takes for granted
that without this knowledge, men must perish in their sins.
3. This is further evident from the nature of the message which
the ministers of the gospel are commissioned to deliver. They are
commanded to go into all the world, and say to every creature,
" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
" He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life : and he that
believeth not the Son, shall not see life ; but the wrath of God
abideth on him." Where is the propriety of such a message if
men can be saved without the knowledge of Christ, and conse-
quently without faith in Him.
4. This necessity of a knowledge of the gospel is expressly
asserted in the Scriptures. Our Lord not only declares that no
man can come unto the Father, but by Him ; that no man know-
HS PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
eth the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal
Him ; but He says expressly, " He that believeth not, shall be
damned." (Mark xvi. 16 ; John iii. 18.) But faith without knowl-
edge is impossible. The Apostle John says, " He that hath the
Son, hath life ; he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life."
(1 John V. 12.) The knowledge of Christ is not only the condi-
tion of life, but it is life ; and without that knowledge, the life in
question cannot exist. Him to know is life eternal. Paul, there-
fore, said, " I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil. iii. 8.) Christ is
not only the giver, but the object of life. Those exercises which
are the manifestations of spiritual life terminate on Him ; without
the knowledge of Him, therefore, there can be no such exercises ;
as without the knowledge of God there can be no religion. It is
consequently, as the Apostle teaches, through the knowledge of
Christ, that God " hath called us to glory and virtue." (2 Peter i.
3.) To be without Christ is to be without hope, and without
God. (Eph. ii. 12.) The Apostle Paul, while asserting the
general vocation of men, saying, " Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord, shall be saved ; " immediately adds, " How
then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed ? and
how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard ? and
how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14.) Invo-
cation implies faith ; faith implies knowledge ; knowledge implies
objective teaching. " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by
the word of God." (Verse 17.) There is no faith, therefore,
where the gospel is not heard ; and where there is no faith, there
is no salvation.
This is indeed an awful doctrine. But are not the words of our
Lord also awful, " Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat ;
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
unto life, and few there be that find it " ? (Matt. vii. 13, 14.) Is not
the fact awful which stares every man in the face, that the great
majority even of those who hear the gospel reject its offers of
mercy. Facts are as mystei'ious as doctrines. If we must submit
to the one, we may as well submit to the other. Our Lord has
taught us, in view of facts or doctrines which try our faith, to re-
member the infinite wisdom and rectitude of God, and say, " Even
so Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight." The proper effect
of the doctrine that the knowledge of the gospel is essential to the
salvation of adults, instead of exciting opposition to God's word or
§ 2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 649
providence, is to prompt us to greatly increased exertion to send
the gosj^el to those who are perishing for lack of knowledge.
Why is the Gospel addressed to all Men?
As all men are not saved, the question arises, Why should the
call be addressed to all ? or. What is the design of God in making
the call of the gospel universal and indiscriminate ? The answer
to this question will be determined by the views taken of other
related points of Christian doctrine. If we adopt the Pelagian
hypothesis that God limits Himself by the creation of free agents;
that such agents must from their nature be exempt from absolute
control ; then the relation to God in this matter is analogous to
that of one finite spirit to another. He can instruct, argue, and
endeavour to persuade. More than this free agency does not
admit. Men as rational, voluntary beings, must be left to deter-
mine for themselves, whether they will return to God in the way
of his appointment, or continue in their rebellion. The call of the
gospel to them is intended to bring them to repentance. This is
an end which God sincerely desires to accomplish, and which He
does all He can to effect. He cannot do more than the preaching
of the gospel accomplishes, without doing violence to the freedom
of voluntary agents.
The Lutherans admit total depravity, and the entire inability of
men since the fall to do anything spiritually good ; but they hold
that the Word of God has an inherent, supernatural, and divine
power, which would infallibly secure the spiritual resurrection of
the spiritually dead, were it not wilfully neglected, or wickedly
resisted. The call of the gospel is, therefore, addressed to all men
with the same intention on the part of God. He not only desires,
as an event in itself well pleasing in his sight, that all may repent
and believe, but that is the end which He purposes to accomplish.
Its accomplishment is hindered, in all cases of failure, by the vol-
untary resistance of men. While, therefore, they attribute the
conversion of men io the efficacious grace of God, and not to the
cooperation or will of the subjects of that grace, they deny that
grace is " irresistible." The fact that one man is converted under
the call of the gospel and not another, that one accepts and an-
other rejects the offered mercy, is not to be referred to anvthino-
in the purpose of God, or to the nature of the influence of which
the hearers of the gospel are the subjects, but solely to the fact
that one does, and the other does not resist that influence. The
Lutheran doctrine is thus clearly stated by Quenstedt : " Voca-
C50 PART m. ch. XIV. — vocation.
tio est actus gratia applicatricls Spiritus Sancti, quo is benignis-
simam Dei erga universum genus humanum lapsum voluntatem per
externain Verbi praedicationem, in se semper sufficientem ac effica-
cem, nianifestat, et bona per Redemtoris meritum parta, omnibus
in universum hominibus off'ert, ea seria intentione, ut omnes per
Christum salvi fiant et geterna vita donentur." And a^ain :
" Forma vocationis consistit in seria atque ex Dei intentione sem-
per sufficiente, semperque efficaci voluntatis divinae manifestatione
ac beneHciorum per Christum acquisitorum oblatione Nulla
enim vocatio Dei sive ex se et intrinseca sua qualitate, sive ex Dei
intentione est inefficax, ut nee possit nee debeat effectum salutarem
producere, sed omnis efficax est licet, quo minus effectum suum
consequatur, ab hominibus obicem ponentibus, impediatur, atque
ita inefficax fit vitio malaR obstinataeque hominum voluntatis." ^
The objections to this view are obvious.
1. It proceeds on the assumption that events in time do not cor-
respond to the purpose of God. This is not only inconsistent with
the divine perfection, but contrary to the express declarations of
Scripture, which teaches that God works all things according to
the counsel of his own will. He foreordains whatever comes to
pass.
2. It supposes either that God has no purpose as to the futuri-
tion of events, or that his " serious intentions " may fail of being
accomplished. This is obviously incompatible with the nature of
an infinite Being.
3. It not only assumes that the purpose of God may fail, but
also that it may be effectually resisted ; that events may occur
which it is his purpose or intention should not occur. How then
can it be said that God governs the world ; or, that He does his
pleasui'e in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth ?
4. It assumes without proof, and contrary to Scripture and ex-
perience, that the Word of God as read or spoken by men, has an
inherent, supernatural, life-giving power, adequate to raise the
spiritually dead. Whereas the Scriptures constantly teach that the
efficacy of the truth is due to the attending influence of the Holy
Spirit, ab extra incidens ; tliat the Word is effectual only when at-
tended by this demonstration of the Spirit, and that without it, it
is foolishness to the Greek and an offence to the Jew ; that Paul
may plant, and Apollos water, but that God only can give the in-
crease.
I Syslema Theologicum, ill. v. 1. 15 and 10, edit. Leipzig, 1715, p. 669; pp. 666, 667.
§2.] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 651
5. It assumes that the only power which God exercises in the
conversion of sinners is that inherent in the Word, whereas the
Scriptures abound with prayers for the gift of the Spirit to attend
the Word and render it effectual ; and such prayers are constantly
offered, and ever have been offered, by the people of God. They
would, however, be not only unnecessary but improper, if God had
revealed his purpose not to grant any such influence, but to leave
men to the unattended power of the Word itself. Any doctrine
contrary to what the Bible prescribes as a duty, and what all Chris-
tians do by the instinct of their renewed nature, must be false.
6. This doctrine, moreover, takes for granted that the ultimate
reason why some hearers of the gospel believe and others do not,
is to be found in themselves ; that the one class is better, more im-
pressible, or less obstinate than the other. The Scriptures, how-
ever, refer this fact to the sovereignty of God. Our Lord says,
" I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes." (Matt. xi. 25.) The Apostle says, " It is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
sheweth mercy."" " I will have mercy," saith God, " on whom I
will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion." (Rom. ix. 15, 16.) " Of him [God] are ye in
Christ Jesus, not of yourselves, lest any should boast." (1 Cor.
i. 30.)
7. The doctrine in question has no support from Scripture. The
passages constantly referred to in its favour are, 1 Timothy ii. 3, 4.
" God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come
unto the knowledge of the truth ; " and Ezekiel xxxiii. 11, " As I
live, saith the Loid God, I have no pleasure in the death of the
wicked ; but that the wicked turn from his way and live." God
forbid that any man should teach anything inconsistent with these
precious declarations of the Word of God. They clearly teach that
God is a benevolent Being ; that He delifjhts not in the sufferincfs
of his creatures ; that in all cases of suffering there is an impera-
tive reason for its infliction, consistent with the highest wisdom and
benevolence. God pities even the wicked whom He condemns, as
a father pities the disobedient child whom he chastises. And as
the father can truthfully and with a full heart say. that he delights
not in the sufferings of iiis child, so our Father in heaven can say,
that He delights not in the death of the wicked. The difficulty as
to the passage in 1 Timothy ii. 4, arises simply from the ambiguity of
the word OeKeiv there used. Commonly the word means to will^ in
662 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
the sense of to intend, to purpose. Such cannot be its meaning
here, because it cannot be said that God intends or purposes that
all men should be saved ; or, that all should come to the knowledge
of the truth. This is inconsistent witli Scripture and experience.
The word, however, often means to delight in, and even to love.
In the Sei)tuagint it is used as the equivalent of ypn, as in Psalms
xxii. 9, cxii. 1, cxlvii. 10. In Matthew, xxvii. 43, v- OiXet airov, is
currectly rendered in our version, " If he will have him." (Heb.
X. 5, 8 ; Luke xx. 46 ; Mark xii. 38 ; Col. ii. 18.) The Apostle,
therefore, says only what the prophet had said. God delights in
the iiappiness of his creatures. He takes no pleasure in the death
of the wicked. But tiiis is perfectly consistent with his purpose
not to " spare the guilty."
8. Finally, the Lutheran doctrine relieves no difficulty. The
Reformed doctrine assumes that some men perish for their sins ;
and that those who are thus left to perish are passed by not because
they are worse than others, but in the sovereignty of God. The
Lutheran doctrine concedes both those facts. Some men do per-
ish ; and they perish, at least in the case of the heathen, without
having the means of salvation offered to them. There is the same
exercise of sovereignty in the one case as in the other. The
Lutheran must stand with his hand upon his mouth, side by side
with the Reformed, and join him in saying, "Even so Father; for
so it seemed good in thy sight."
The simple representation of Scripture on this subject, confirmed
by the facts of consciousness and experience is, that all men are
sinners ; they are all guilty before God ; they have all forfeited
every claim upon his justice. His relation to them is that of a
father to his disobedient children ; or, of a sovereign to wickedly
rebellious subjects. It is not necessary that all should receive the
punishment which they have justly incurred. In the sight of an
infinitely good and merciful God, it is necessary that some of the
rebellious race of man should suffer the penalty of the law which
all have broken. It is God's prerogative to determine who shall
be vessels of mercy, and who shall be left to the just recompense
of their sins. Such are the declarations of Scripture ; and such
are the facts of the case. We can alter neither. Our blessedness
is to trust in the Lord, and to rejoice that the destiny of his crea-
tures is not in their own hands, nor in the hands either of fate or
of chance ; but in those of Him who is infinite in wisdom, love,
and power.
But if the Lutheran doctrine that the call of the gospel is uni-
§ 2] THE EXTERNAL CALL. 653
versal, or indiscriminate, because it is the intention of God that all
should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, is con-
trary to Scripture, the question remains, Why are those called
whom it is not the intention of God to save ? Why are all called,
if God has a fixed purpose of rendering that call effectual to some
and not to others ?
1. The most obvious answer to that question is found in the
nature of the call itself. The call of the gospel is simply the com-
mand of God to men to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, with the pi'omise that those who believe shall be saved. It
is the revelation of a duty binding upon all men. There is as
much reason that men should be commanded to believe in Christ,
as that they should be commanded to love God. The one duty is
as universally obligatory as the other. The command to believe
no more implies the intention on the part of God to give faith,
than the command to love implies the intention to give love. And
as the latter command does not assume that men have of them-
selves power to love God perfectly, so neither does the command to
believe assume the power of exercising saving faith, which the
Scriptures declare to be the gift of God.
2. The general call of the gospel is the means ordained by God.
to gather in his chosen people. They are mingled with other men,
unknown except by God. The duty obligatory on all is made
known to all ; a privilege suited to all is offered indiscriminately.
That some only are made wilUng to perform the duty, or to accept
the privilege, in no way conflicts with the propriety of the univer-
sal proclamation.
3. Tiiis general call of the gospel with the promise that whoever
believes shall be saved, serves to show the unreasonable wickedness
and perverseness of those who deliberately reject it. The justice
of their condemnation is thus rendered the more obvious to them-
selves and to all other rational creatures. " This is the condemna-
tion, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil. He that believeth
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God." (John iii. 19, 18.) The
most unreasonable sin which men commit is refusing to accept of
the Son of God as their Saviour. This refusal is as deliberate, and
as voluntary, according to the Reformed doctrine, as it is according
to the Lutheran or even the Pelagian theory.
654 PART m. Cn. XIV. — VOCATION.
§ 3. Common G-race.
The word x"-P'-'>^ ^5^7? means a favourable disposition, or kind
feeling ; and especially love as exercised towards the inferior, de-
pendent, or unworthy. This is represented as the crowning attri-
bute of the divine nature. Its manifestation is declared to be the
grand end of the whole scheme of redemption. The Apostle
teaches that predestination, election, and salvation are all intended
for the praise of the glory of the grace of God which He exercises
towards us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. i. 3-6.) He raises men from
spiritual death, " and makes them sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the ex-
ceeding riches of his grace." (Eph. ii. 6, 7.) Therefore it is
often asserted that salvation is of grace. The gospel is a system
of grace. All its blessings are gratuitously bestowed ; all is so
ordered that in every step of the progress of redemption and in its
consummation, the grace, or undeserved love of God, is conspicu-
ously displayed. Nothing is given or promised on the ground of
merit. Everything is an undeserved favour. That salvation was
provided at all, is a matter of grace and not of debt. That one
man is saved, and another not, is to the subject of salvation, a mat-
ter of grace. All his Christian virtues, are graces, i. e., gifts.
Hence it is that the greatest of all gifts secured by the work of
Christ, that without which salvation had been impossible, the Holy
Ghost, in the influence which He exerts on the minds of men, has
in all ages and in all parts of the Church been designated as divine
grace. A work of grace is the work of the Holy Spirit ; the
means of grace, are the means by which, or in connection with
which, the influence of the Spirit is conveyed or exercised. By
common grace, therefore, is meant that influence of the Spirit,
which in a greater or less measure, is granted to all who hear the
truth. By sufficient grace is meant such kind and degree of the
Spirit's influence, as is sufficient to lead men to repentance, faith,
and a holy life. By efficacious grace is meant such an influence
of the Spirit as is certainly effectual in producing regeneration and
conversion. By preventing grace is intended that operation of the
Spirit on the mind which precedes and excites its efforts to return
to God. By the gratia gratum faciens is meant the influence of
the Spirit which renews or renders gracious. Cooperating grace
is that Influence of the Spirit which aids the ])eople of God in
all the exercises of the divine life. By habitual grace is meant the
Holy Spirit as dwelling in believers ; or, that permanent, immanent
§3] COMMON GRACE. 655
state of mind due to his abiding presence and power. Sucli is
the estabhshed theological and Christian usage of this word. By
grace, therefore, in this connection is meant the influence of the
Spirit of God on the minds of men.
This is an influence of the Holy Spirit distinct from, and acces-
sary to the influence of the truth. There is a natural relation
between truth, whether speculative, aesthetic, moral, or religious,
and the mind of man. All such truth tends to produce an effect
suited to its nature, unless counteracted by inadequate apprehen-
sion or by the inward state of those to whom it is presented.
This is of course true of the Word of God. It is replete with
truths of the highest order ; the most elevated ; the most impor-
tant ; the most pertinent to the nature and necessities of man ;
and the best adapted to convince the reason, to control the con-
science, to affect the heart, and to govern the life. Opposed to
this doctrine of the supernatural influence of the Spirit of God on
the minds of men, additional to the moral influence of the truth, is
the deistical theory of God's relation to the world. That theory
assumes that having created all things, and endowed his creatures
of every order, material and immaterial, rational and irrational,
with the properties and attributes suited to their nature and des-
tiny, he leaves the world to the control of these subordinate or
second causes, and never intervenes with the exercise of his imme-
diate agency. This same view is by many Rationalists, Pelagians,
and Remonstrants, transferred to the sphere of the moral and re-
licjious relations of man. God havino; made man a rational and
moral being and endowed him with free agency ; and having re-
vealed in his works and in his Word the truth concerning Himself
and the relation of man to the great Creator, leaves man to himself.
There is no influence on the part of God exerted on the minds of
men, apart from that which is due to the truth which He has
revealed. Those numerous passages of Scripture which attribute
the conversion and sanctification of men to the Spirit of God, the
advocates of this theory explain by saying : That as the Spirit is
the author of the truth. He may be said to be the author of the
effects which the truth produces ; but they deny any intervention
or agency of the Spirit additional to the truth objectively present
to the mind. On this point Limborch ^ says, " Interna vocatio ....
qua3 fit per Spiritum Dei, .... non est virtus Spiritus seorsim
operans a verbo, sed per verbum, et verbo semper inest
Non dicimus duas esse (vorbi et Spiritus) actiones specie distinetas :
1 Theoluyia ChrUtinna, iv. xii. 2; edit. Amsterdam, 1715, p. 350, a.
656 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
sed unam eandemque actionem ; quoniam verbum est Spiritus, hoc
est, Spiritus verbo inest." ^ This may be understood either in a
Rationalistic, or in a Lutlieran sense. It expresses the views of
those extreme Remonstrants who inclined most to Pelagianism.
With Pelagius little more was meant by grace than the providen-
tial blessings which men enjoyed in a greater or less degree. Even
free-will as a natural endowment he called grace.
Lutheran Doctrine on Common Grace.
A second view on this subject is that of the Lutherans already
referred to. They also deny any influence of the Spirit accessary
to the power inherent in the Word. But they are very far from
adopting the deistical or rationalistic hypothesis. They fully admit
the supernatural power of Christianity and all its ordinances.
They hold that the Word " habet vim aut potentiam activam su-
pernaturalem ac vere divinam ad producendos supernaturales
effectus, scilicet, mentes hominum convertendas, regenerandas et
renovendas." ^ This divine efficacy is inherent in, and inseparable
from the Word. The words of man have only human power, pre-
senting arguments and motives to convince and to persuade.
The Word of God has supernatural and divine power. If in any
case it fail to produce supernatural effect, i. e., to renew and
sanctify, the fault is in the hearer. It is like articles of the ma-
teria medica, which have inherent virtue, but wdiich nevertheless
require a suitable condition in those to whom they are adminis-
tered, in order to their proper effect. Or, to take a much higher
illustration and one of which the Lutheran divines are especially
fond ; the Word is like the person of our Lord Jesus Christ when
here on earth. He was replete with divine virtue. Whoever
touched even the hem of his garment, was made whole of what-
ever disease he had. Nevertheless without faith, contact with
Christ was inefficacious. There is all the difference, therefore,
according to the Lutheran doctrine, between the word of man and
the Word of God, that there was between Christ and ordinary
men. The effect of the Word is no more to be attributed to its
natural power as truth on the understanding and conscience, than
the cures effected by Christ are to be referred to any natural
remedial agencies. The effect in both cases is supernatural and
divine. " Verbum Dei," says Quensted,^ " non agit solum per-
suasiones morales, proponendo nobis objectum amabile, sed etiam
1 Theologia Christiana, iv. xii. 4; p. 351, a. 2 Schmid, Dogmatik, third edit. p. 393.
8 Systema Theologicum, i. iv. 2, 16, 4, edit. Leipzig, 1715, p. 248.
§ 3.] COMMON GRACE. 657
vero, reali, dlvino et ineffabili influxu potentire suae gratiosae, ita ut
efficaciter et vere convertat, illuminet, salvet in illo, cum illo et per
illud operante Spiritu Sancto ; in hoc enim consistit verbi divini et
humani differentia." So Hollaz says,i " Verbum Dei, qua tale, non
potest fingi sine divina virtute aut sine Spiritu Sancto, qui a verbo
suo inseparabilis est. Nam si a verbo Dei separetur Spiritus
Sanctus, non esset id Dei verbum vel verbum Spiritus, sed esset
verbum humanum." As the Spirit, so to speak, is thus immanent
in the Word, he never operates on the mind except through and
by the Word. On this point Luther and the Lutheran divines
insisted with great earnestness. They were especially led to take
this ground from the claims of fanatical Anabaptists, to direct
spiritual communications independent of the Scriptures to which
they made the written Word subordinate : " Pater neminem tra-
here vult, absque mediis, sed utitur tanquam ordinariis mediis et
instrumentis, verbo suo et sacramentis." ^ " Constanter tenendum
est, Deum nemini Spiritum vel gratiam suam largiri, nisi per ver-
bum et cum verbo externo et praecedente, ut ita praemuniamus
nos adversum enthusiastas, id est, spiritus, qui jactitant, se ante
verbum et sine verbo Spiritum habere, et ideo scripturam sive vocale
verbum judicant, flectunt et reflectunt pro libito, ut faciebat Mone-
tarius, et multi adhuc hodie, qui acute discernere volunt inter Spir-
itum et literam, et neutrum norunt, nee quid statuant, sciunt."'
The Lutherans, therefore, reject the distinction made by Calvin-
ists between the external and internal call. They admit such a
distinction, " sed," as Quenstedt* says, " ut externam vocationem in-
ternae non opponamus, nee unam ab altera separamus, cum externa
vocatio internae medium sit ac organon et per illam Deus efficax
sit in cordibus hominum. Si externa vocatio non ex asse congruit
internee, si externe vocatus esse potest qui non interne, vana fuerit,
fallax, illusoria."
Rationalistic View.
A third doctrine which is opposed to the Scriptural teaching on
this subject, is that which makes no distinction between the in-
fluence of the Spirit and the providential efficiency of God. Thus
Wegscheider ^ says, " Operationes gratiae immediatas et supernatu-
rales jam olipi nonnulli recte monuerunt, nee diserte promissas esse
1 By Schmid, p. 396.
^ F<n-mula Concot-duB, xi. 76; Hase, Libii Symbolici, p. 818. Sec Cotifessio Augtutana,
I. V. 2; Ihirl. p. 11.
8 Articuli SmakaliHci, viii. 3; Hase, p. 331.
♦ Systema Theohgicum, in. v. 1, 15 ( ?); edit. Leipzig, 1715, p. 669.
6 Inslilulimes Theoloyia, in. iii. § 15-2; fifth edit., pp. 469, 470.
vol.. II. 42
658 PART III. Ch. XIY.— vocation.
in llbris sacris nee iiecessarias, quum, quae ad aniinum emendanduin
valeaiit, omnia legibus natnrae a Deo optime efficiantur, nee de-
nique ita eonspicuas ut cognosci eerto et intelligi possint. Accedit,
quod libertatem et stadium hominum impediunt, mysticorum som-
nia fovent et Deum ipsum auctorem arguunt peccatorum ab lioin-
inibus non emendatis eommissorum Omnis igitur de gratia
disputatio reetius ad doctrinam de providentia Dei singulari et con-
cursu refertur." To the same effect De Wette says : " It is one
and the same effieiency, producing good in men, which accord-
ing to the natural anthropological view we ascribe to themselves,
and according to the relio;ious view to God. These two modes of
appi'ehension ought not to be considered as opposed to each other,
but as mutually compensative." Again, " Religious faith regards
the impulse to good (die Begeisterung zum Guten) as an efflux
from God ; pliilosophical reflection as the force of reason." ^
It depends of course on the view taken of God's relation to the
world, what is the degree or kind of influence to be ascribed to
Him in promoting the reformation or sanctification of men. Ac-
cording to the mechanical theory, adopted by Deists, Rationalists,
or (as they are often called in distinctit)n from Supernaturalists)
Naturalists, there is no exercise of the power of God on the minds
of men. As He leaves the external world to the control of the
laws of nature, so He leaves the world of mind to the control of
its own laws. But as almost all systems of philosophy assume a
more intimate relation between the Creator and his creatures
than this theory acknowledges, it follows that confounding the
providential agency of God over his creatures with the influence
of the Holy Spirit, admits of the ascription to Him of an agency
more or less direct in the I'egeneration and sanctification of men.
According to the common doctrine of Theism second causes
have a real efficiency, but they are ni)held and guided in their
operation by the omnipresent and universally active efficiency of
God ; so that the effects produced are properly referred to God.
He sends rain upon the earth ; He causes the grass to grow ; He
fashions the eye and forms the ear; and He feeds the young
ravens when they cry. All the operations of nature in the exter-
nal world, which evince design, are due not to the woqj^ing of blind
physical laws, but to those laws as constantly guided by the mind
and will of God. In like manner He is said to control the laws of
mind ; to sustain and direct the operation of moral causes. His
relation to the world of mind is, in this point, analogous to his rela-
1 De Wette's Dofjmatlk, § 167. ( ?)
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 659
tion to the material world. And in the same sense, and for the
same reason that He is said to give a plentiful harvest, He is said
to make men fruitful in good feeling and in good works. Conver-
sion, according to this view, is just as much a natural process as
intellectual culture, or the growth of vegetables or animals. This
is the doctrine of Rationalists as distinguished from Supernatural-
ists.
Many philosophical systems, liowever, ignore all second causes.
They assume that effects are due to the immediate agency of God.
This is the doctrine not only of Pantheists, but also of many Chris-
tian philosophers. This idea is involved in the theory of occasional
causes, and in the doctrine so popular at one time among tiieolo-
gians that preservation is a continual creation. If God creates the
universe ex nihilo every successive moment, as even President
Edwards strenuously asserts, then all effects and changes are the
product of his omnipotence, and the efficiency or agency of second
causes is of necessity excluded. According to this doctrine there
can be no distinction between the operations of nature and those
of grace. The same thing is obviously true in reference to the
theory of Dr. Emmons and the high Hopkinsians. Dr. Emmons
teaches tiiat God creates all the volitions of men, crood or bad.
The soul itself is but a series of exercises. First in chronological
order comes a series of sinful volitions ; then, in some cases, not in
all, this is followed by a series of holy volitions. God is equally
the author of the one and of the other. This is true of all mental
exercises. No creature can originate action. God is the only real
agent in the universe. According to this doctrine all operations
of the Spirit are merged in this universal providential efficiency of
God ; and all distinction between nature and grace, the natural
and the supernatural is obliterated.
In opposition, therefore, first, to the proper naturalistic theory,
which excludes God entirely from his works, and denies to Him
any controlling influence either over material or mental operations
and effects ; secondly, in opposition to the doctrines which identify
the operations or influence of the Spirit with tlie |)Ower of the
truth ; and thirdly, in opposition to the theory which ignores the
difference between the providential efficiency of God and the oper-
ations of the Holy Spirit; the Scriptures teach that the influence
of the Spirit is distinct from the mere power, whether natural or
supernatural, of the truth itself; and that it is no less to be dis-
tinguished from the providential efficiency (or potentia ordinatd)
of God which cooperates with all second causes.
660 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
There is an influence of the Spirit distinct from the Truth.
As to the first of these points, namely, that there is an influence
of tlie Spirit on the minds distinct from and accessary to the power
of the truth, whicli attends the truth sometimes with more, and
sometimes with less power, according to God's good pleasure, the
proof from Scripture is plain and abundant.
1. The Bible makes a broad distinction between the mere hear-
ers of the Word, and those inwardly taught by God. When our
Lord says (John vi. 44), " No man can come to me except the
Father which hath sent me draw him ; " he evidently refers to an
inward drawing and teaching beyond that effected by the truth as
objectively presented to the mind. All the power which the truth
as truth has over the reason and conscience is exerted on all who
hear it. This of itself is declared to be insufficient. An inward
teaching by the Spirit is absolutely necessary to give the truth
effect. This distinction between the outward teaching of the Word
and the inward teaching of the Spirit is kept up throughout the
Scriptures. The Apostle in 1 Corinthians i. 23-26, as well as
elsewhere, says that the gospel however clearly preached, however
earnestly enforced, even though Paul or Apollos were the teacher,
is weakness and foolishness, without power to convince or to con-
vert, unless rendered effectual by the demonstration of the Spirit.
" The called," therefoi-e, according to the Scriptures are not the
hearers of the Word, but are those who receive an inward voca-
tion by the Spirit. All whom God calls. He justifies, and all
whom He justifies He glorifies. (Rom. viii. 30.)
2. The reason is given wh}' the truth in itself is inoperative,
and why the inward teaching of the Spirit is absolutely necessary.
That reason is found in the natural state of man since the fall.
He is spiritually dead. He is deaf and blind. He does not re-
ceive the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned. It is therefore those only who are
spiritual, i. g., in whom the Spirit dwells, and wliose discernment,
feelings and whole life are determined by the Spirit, who receive
the truths which are freely given unto all who hear the gospel.
This is the doctrine of the Apostle as delivered in 1 Corinthians ii.
10-15. And such is the constant representation of the woi'd of
God on this subject.
3. The Scriptures therefore teach that there is an influence of
the Spirit required to prepare the minds of men for the reception
of the truth. The truth is compared to light, which is absolutely
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 661
necessary to vision ; but if the eye be closed or blind it must be
opened or restored before the light can produce its proper impres-
sion. The Psalmist therefore prays, " Open thou mine eyes, that
I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." (Psalm cxix. 18.)
In Acts xvi. 14, it is said of Lydia, "Whose heart the Lord opened,
that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul."
4. Accordingly the great promise of the Scriptures especially in
reference to the Messianic period was the effusion of the Holy
Spirit. " Afterward," said the prophet Joel, " I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh " (ii. 28). The effects which the Spirit was
to produce prove that something more, and something different
from the power of the truth was intended. The truth however
clearly revealed and however imbued with supernatural energy
could not give the power to prophesy, or to dream dreams or to see
visions. The Old Testament abounds with predictions and prom-
ises of this gift of the Holy Ghost, which was to attend and to
render effectual the clearer revelation of the things of God to be
made by the Messiah. Isaiah xxxii. 15, " Until the Spirit be
poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field be counted for a forest." Isaiali xliv. 3, " I
will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry
ground ; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon
thine offspring." Ezekiel xxxix. 29, " I have poured out my Spirit
upon the house of Israel." Zechariah xii. 10, " I will pour upon
the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the
spirit of grace and of supplications ; and they shall look upon me
whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one
mourneth for his only son."
After the resurrection of our Lord He directed his disciples to
remain at Jerusalem until they were imbued with power from on
high. That is, until they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It was on the day of Pentecost that the Spirit descended upon the
disciples, as the Apostle said, in fulfilment of the predictions of the
Old Testament prophets. The effect of his influence was not only
a general illumination of the minds of the Apostles, and the com-
munication of miraculous gifts, but the conversion of five thousand
persons to the faith at once. It is impossible to deny that these
effects were due to the power of the Sj)irit as something distinct
from, and accessary to, the mere power of the truth. Thic is the
explanation of the events of the day of Pentecost given by the
Apostle Peter, in Acts ii. 32, 33, " This Jesus hath God raised
up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the richt
662 PART in. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the prom-
ise of the Holy Ghost, lie hath shed forth this, which ye now see
and hear." This was the fulfilment of the promise which Christ
made to his disciples that He would send them another Comforter,
even the Spirit of truth who should abide with them forever.
(John xiv. 16.) That Spirit was to teach them ; to bring all
things to their remembrance ; He was to testify of Christ ; reprove
the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; and he was to
give the Apostles a mouth and wisdom which their adversaries
should not be able to gainsay or resist. Believers, therefore, are
said to receive the Holy Ghost. They have an unction from the
Holy One, which abides with them and teaches them all things.
(1 John ii. 20 and 27.)
When our Lord says (Luke xi. 13), that our Father in heaven
is more willing to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, than
parents are to give good gifts unto their children, He certainly
means something more by the gift of the Spirit, than the knowl-
edge of his Word. Thousands hear and do not understand or
believe. The Spirit is promised to attend the teaching of the Word
and to render it effectual, and this is the precious gift which God
promises to bestow on those who ask it. " Hereby we know,"
says the Apostle, " that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he
hath given us." (1 John iii. 24.) The Holy Ghost, therefore, is
a gift. It is a gift bestowed on those who already have the Word,
and consequently it is something distinct from the Word.
5. Another clear proof that the Spirit exercises upon the minds
of men an influence distinguishable from the influence of the truth
either in the Lutheran or Remonstrant view, is that those Avho
have the knowledge of the Word as read or heard, are directed to
pray for the gift of the Spirit to render that Word eftectual. Of
such prayers we have many examples in the Sacred Scriptures.
David, in Psalm li. 11, prays, " Take not thy Holy Spirit from me."
The Apostle prays in behalf of the Ephesians to whom for more
than two years he had been j)reaching the Gospel, that God would
give them the Holy Spirit, that they might have the knowledge of
Him, that their eyes might be opened to know the hope of their
calling, and the iich(*s of the glory of the inheritance of the saints,
and the exceeding greatness of the power of which they Avere the
subjects. (Eph. i. 17-19.) He makes a similar prayer in be-
half of the Colossians. (Col. i. 9-11.) On the other hand men
are warned not to grieve or quench the Spirit lest he should
depart from them. The great judgment which ever hangs over
§3.] COM^ION GRACE. 663
the impenitent hearers of the Gospel is, that God may withhold
the Holy Spirit, leaving them to themselves and to the mere
power inherent in the truth. Such are reprobates ; men with
whom the Spirit has ceased to strive. It is obvious, therefore, that
the Scriptures recognize an influence of the Holy Ghost which
may be given or withheld, and which is necessary to give the truth
any power on the heart.
6. The Scriptures therefore always recognize the Holy Spirit as
the immediate author of regeneration, of repentance, of faith, and
of all holy exercises. He dwells in believers, controlling their in-
ward and outward life. He enlightens, leads, sanctifies, strength-
ens, and comforts. All these efi^ects are attributed to his agency.
He bestows his gifts on every one severally as he will. (1 Cor.
xii. 11.) The Bible does not more clearly teach that the gifts of
tongues, of healing, of miracles, and of wisdom, are the fruits' of
the Spirit, than that the saving graces of faith, love, and hope are
to be referred to his operations. The one class of gifts is no more
due to the inherent power of the truth than the other. The
Apostle, therefore, did not depend for the success of his preaching
upon the clearness with which the truth was presented, or the
earnestness with which it was enforced, but on the attending
" demonstration of the Spirit." (1 Cor. ii. 4.) He gave thanks
to God tliat the Gospel came to the Thessalonians " not in word
only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost." (1 Thess. i.
5.) He prayed that God would fulfil in them "the work of faith
with power." (2 Thess. i. 11.) He reminded the Philippians
that it was God who worked in them " both to will and to do of
his good pleasure." (Phil. ii. 13.) In Hebrews xiii. 21, he
prays that God would make his people perfect, working in them
" that which is well-pleasing in his sight." Indeed, every prayer
recorded in the Scriptures for the conversion of men, for their
sanctification, and for their consolation, is a recognition of the
doctrine that God works on the mind of men by his Holy Spirit
according to his own good pleasure. This is especially true of the
apostolic benediction. By the " communion of the Holy Ghost,"
which that benediction invokes, is meant a participation in the
sanctifying and saving influences of the Spirit.
7. This truth, that the Spirit does attend the Word and ordi-
nances of God by a power not inherent in the Word and sacraments
themselves, but granted in larger or less measures, as God sees fit,
is inwrought into the faith of the whole Christian Church. All
the Liturgies of the Greek, Latin, and Protestant churches are
664 PART in. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
filled with prayers for tlie gift of the Spirit to attend the Word
and sacraments. Every Christian offers such prayers daily for
himself and others. The whole history of the Church is full of
the record of facts which are revelations of this great doctrine.
Why were thousands converted on the day of Pentecost, when
so few believed under the preaching of Christ himself? Why
during the apostolic age did the Church make such rapid progress
in all parts of the world ? Why at the Reformation, and at many
subsequent periods, were many born in a day ? Every revival of
religion is a visible manifestation of the power of the Holy Ghost
accessary' to the power of the truth. This, therefore, is a doctrine
which no Christian should allow himself for a moment to call into
question.
The Influence of the Spirit may he without the Word.
There is another unscriptural view of this subject which must at
least be noticed, although its full consideration belongs to another
department. Many admit that there is a supernatural power of
the Spirit attending the Word and sacraments, but they hold that
the Spirit is confined to these channels of communication ; that
He works in them and by them but never without them. On this
subject Romanists hold that Christ gave the Holy Spirit to the
Apostles. They transmitted the gift to their successors the bishops.
Bishops in the laying on of hands in ordination communicate the
grace of orders to the priests. In virtue of this grace the priests
have supernatural power to render the sacraments the channels of
grace to those who submit to their ministrations. Those, there-
fore, who are in the Romish Church, and those only, are, through
the sacraments, made partakers of the Holy Spirit. All others,
whether adults or infants, perish because they are not partakers of
those ordinances through which alone the saving influences of the
Spirit are communicated. This also is the doctrine held by those
called Anfrlicans in the Church of England.
The Lutheran Church rejected with great earnestness the doc-
trine of Apostolic Succession, the Grace of Orders, and the Priest-
hood of the Christian Ministry as held by the Church of Rome.
Lutherans, however, taught not only that there is " a mystical
luiion " between the Spirit and the Word, as we have already
seen, so that all saving effects are produced by the power inherent
in the Word itself, and that the Spirit does not operate on the
hearts of men without the Word, but also that there is an objec-
tive supernatural power in the sacraments themselves, so that tiiey
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 665
are, under all ordinary circumstances, the necessary me'^ans of sal-
vation.
The Reformed, while they teach that, so far as adults are con-
cerned, the knowledge of the Gospel is necessary to salvation, yet
hold that the operations of the Holy Spirit are confined neither to
the Word nor to the sacraments. He works when and where He
sees fit, as in the times of the Old Testament and during the
Apostolic age his extraordinary gifts were not conveyed through the
medium of the truth, so neither now are the gifts for ecclesiastical
office, nor is the regeneration of infants, effected by any such
instrumentality. The saving efficacy of the Word and sacraments
where they take effijot, is not due to " any virtue in them ; . . . .
but only " to " the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit
in them that by faith receive them."
The Work of the Spirit is distinct from Providential Efficiency.
As grace, or the influence of the Holy Spirit, is not inherent in
the Word or sacraments, so neither is it to be confounded with
the providential efficiency of God. The Scriptures clearly teach,
(1.) That God is everywhere present in the world, upholding all
the creatures in being and activity. (2.) That He constantly
cooperates with second causes in the 'production of their effects.
He fashioned our bodies. He gives to every seed its own body.
(3.) Besides this ordered efficiency (jpotentia ordinatd), which
works uniformly according to fixed laws. He, as a free, personal,
extramundane Being, controls the operations of these fixed laws, or
the efficiency of second causes, so as to determine their action ac-
cording to his own will. He causes it to rain at one time and not at
another. He sends fruitful seasons, or He causes drought. " Elias
.... prayed earnestly that it might not rain ; and it rained not on
the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he
prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth
her fruit." (James v. 17, 18.) (4.) A like control is exercised over
mankind. The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord, and He
turns it as the rivers of water are turned. He makes poor and
makes rich. He raises up one and puts down another. A man's
heart deviseth his way ; but the Lord directeth his steps. By
Him kings rule and princes decree justice. Such, according to
the Scriptures, is the providential government of God who works
all things according to the counsel of his own will.
As distinct from this providential control which extends over all
creatures, the Scriptures tell of the sphere of the S[)irit's operations.
666 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
This does not imply that the Sjjirit has nothing to do in the crea-
tion, preservation, and government of the world. On the contrary,
the Bible teaches that whatever God does in nature, in the mate-
rial world and in the minds of men. He does through the Spirit.
Nevertheless the Scriptures make a broad distinction between
providential government, and the operations of the Spirit in the
moral irovernment of men and in carrvin^ forward the iireat plan
of redemption. This is the distinction between nature and grace.
To these special operations of the Spirit are attributed, —
1. The revelation of truth. Nothing is plainer than that the
great doctrines of the Bible were made known not in the way of
tlie orderly development of the race, or of a growth in human
knowledge, but by a supernatural intervention of God by the
Spirit.
2. The inspiration of the sacred writers, who spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost.
3. The various gifts, intellectual, moral, and physical, bestowed
on men to qualify them for the special service of God. Some of
these gifts were extraordinary or miraculous, as in the case of
the Apostles and others ; others were ordinary, i. e., such as do
not transcend the limits of human power. To this class belong
the skill of artisans, the cuurage and strength of heroes, the wis-
dom of statesmen, the ability to rule, etc. Thus it was said of
Bezaleel, " I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom
and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of
workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in sil-
ver, and in brass." (Exod. xxxi. 3, 4.) Of the seventy elders
chosen by Moses, it is said, " I will take of the Spirit which is upon
thee, and will put it upon them." (Num. xi. 17.) Joshua was
appointed to succeed Moses, because in him was the Spirit. (Num.
xxvii. 18.) " The Spirit of the Lord came upon " Othniel " and
he judged Israel." (Judg. iii. 10.) So the Spirit of the Lord is
said to have come upon Gideon, Jephtha, and Samson. When
Saul was called to be king over Israel, the Spirit of the Lord came
upon him; and when he was rejected for disobedience, the Spirit
departed from him. (1 Sam. xvi. 14.) When Samuel anointed
David, it is said, " The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from
that day forward." (1 Sam. xvi. 13.) In like manner under
the new dispensation, " There are diversities of gifts, but the same
Spirit." (1 Cor. xii. 4.) And by these gifts some were made
apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some workers of miracles.
(1 Cor. xii. 29.) Paul, therefore, exhorted the elders of Ephe-
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 667
sus to take heed to the flock, over which the Holy Ghost liad
made them overseers, (Acts xx. 28.)
4. To tlie Spirit are also referred conviction of sin, rij^liteous-
ness, and judoment ; the resistance and rehuke of evil in the lieart ;
strivings and warnino;s ; illumination of the conscience; conviction
of the truth ; powerful restraints ; and temporary faith f )unded on
moral convictions ; as well as rejjeneration, sanctification, consola-
tion, strenoth, perseverance in holiness, and final glorification both
of the soul and of the body.
All these effects which the Bible clearly and constantly refers
to the Holy Spirit. Rationalism refers to second causes and to
the attending providential efficiency of God. It admits of revela-
tion, but only of such as is made in the works of God and in the
constitution of our nature, apprehended by the mind in its normal
exercises. All truth is discovered by the intuitive or discursive
operations of reason. Inspiration is only the subjective state due
to the influence of these ti'uths on the mind. Miracles are dis-
carded, or referred to some higher law. Or if admitted, they are
allowed to stand by themselves, and all other subsequent interven-
tion of God in controlling the minds of men is reduced to the reg-
ular process of human develo])ment and progress. The Bible
and the Church universal recognize a broad distinction between
the work of the Spirit and the operation of second causes as
energized and controlled b}^ the general efficiency of God. It is
to one and the same divine agent that all the influences which con-
trol the conduct, form the character, and renew and sanctify the
children of men, are to be referred ; that by his energy revealed
the truth to the prophets and apostles, rendered them infallible as
teachers, and confirmed their divine missions by signs, and won-
ders, and divers miracles. The former class no more belong to
the category of nature or natural operations, than the latter.
God as an extramundane S])irit, a personal agent, has access to all
other spirits. He can and He does act upon them as one spirit
acts upon another, and also as only an Almighty Spirit can act ;
tliat is, producing effects which God alone can accomplish.
The Bible therefore teaches that the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of
truth, of holiness, and of life in all its forms, is present with every
human mind, enforcing truth, restraining from evil, exciting to
good, and imparting wisdom or strength, when, where, and in what
measxu'e seemeth to Him good. In this sphere also He divides
" to every man severally as He will." (1 Cor. xii. 11.) This is
what in theology is called common grace.
668 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
The Influences of the Spirit granted to all Men.
That there is a divine influence of the Spirit granted to all
men, is plain both from Scripture and from experience.
1. Even in Genesis vi. 3 (according to our version), it is said,
" My Spirit shall not always strive with man." The Hebrew verb
^rn means, to rule, to judge. The sense of the passage therefore
may be, as given by Gesenius, De Wette, and others, " Nicht f iir
immer soil mein Geist walten im Menschen." My Spirit shall not
alivays rule in man. But this means more than the Septuagint
expresses by KaTa/j.^Lvrj and the Vulgate by permanehit. The
Spirit of God, as Keil and Delitzsch properly remark, is the prin-
ciple of s])iritual as well as of natural life. What God threatened
was to withdraw his Spirit from men on account of their wicked-
ness, and to give them up to destruction. This includes the idea
expressed in the English version of the passage. The Spirit of
God had hitherto exerted an influence in the government of men,
which, after the appointed time of delay, was to cease. Rosen-
miiller's explanation is, " Non feram, ut Spiritus meus, per prophe-
tas admonens homines, ab his in perpetuum contemnatur : pu-
niam ! " The clause per prophetas admonens has nothing in the
text to suggest or justify it. It is inserted because Rosen miiller
admitted no influence of the Spirit that was not indirect or me-
diate.
2. The martyr Stephen (Acts vii. 51) tells the Jews, " As your
fathers did .... ye do always resist the Holy Ghost," as the
prophet Isaiah Ixiii. 10, said of the men of his generation, that they
vexed God's Holy Spirit. The Spirit, therefore, is represented as
striving with the wicked, and with all men. They are charged
with resisting, grieving, vexing, and quenching his operations.
This is the familiar mode of Scriptural representation. As God is
everywhere present in the material world, guiding its operations
according to the laws of nature; so He is everywhere present with
the minds of men, as the Spirit of truth and goodness, operating
on them according to the laws of their free moral agencv, inclining
them to crood and restrainino; them from evil.
3. That the Spirit' does exercise this general influence, common
to all men, is further plain from what the Scriptures teach of the
reprobate. There are men from whom God withdi'aws the re-
sti'uints of his Spirit; whom for their sins, He gives up to them-
selves and to the power of evil. This is represented as a fearful
doom. It fell, as the Apostle teaches, upon tlie heathen world for
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 669
their impiety. As they " changed the truth of God into a h'e, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator ....
God gave them up unto vile affections .... As they did not like
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a repro-
bate mind." (Rom. i. 25-28.) " My people would not liearken to
my voice : and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto
their own hearts' lusts : and they walked in their own counsels."
(Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 12.) As men are warned against grieving the Spirit ;
as they are taught to pray that God would not take his Holy
Spirit from them ; as Avithdrawing the Spirit from any individual
or people is represented as a direful judgment, the fact that the
Spirit of God does operate on the minds of all men, to a greater
or less degree, is clearly taught in Scripture.
4. The Bible therefore speaks of men as partakers of the Spirit
who are not regenerated, and who finally come short of eternal
life. It not only speaks of men repenting, of their believing for a
time, and of their receiving the Word with joy, but still further of
their being enlightened, of their tasting of the heavenly gift, and
of their being made partakers of the Holy Ghost. (Heb. vi. 4.)
Argument from Experience.
What is thus taught in Scripture is confirmed by the experience
of every man, and of the Church in the whole course of its history.
God leaves no man without a witness. No one can recall the
time when he was not led to serious thouglits, to anxious inquiries,
to desires and efforts, which he could not rationally refer to the
operation of natural causes. These effects are not due to the
mere moi*al influence of the truth, or to the influence of other
men over our minds, or to the operation of the circumstances in
which we may be placed. There is something in the nature of
these experiences, and of the way in which they come and go,
which proves that they are due to the operation of the Spirit of
God. As the voice of conscience has in it an authority Avhich it
does not derive from ourselves, so these experiences have in them
a character which reveals the source whence they come. They
are the effects of that still small voice, which sounds in every
human ear, saying, This is the way ; walk ye in it. This is much
more obvious at one time than at others. There are seasons in
every man's life, when he is almost overwhelmed with the power
of these convictions. He may endeavour to suppress them by
an effort of the will, by arguments to prove them to be unreason-
able, and by diverting his mind by business or amusement, without
670 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
success. God reveals Himself as distinctly in the workings of
our inward nature as He does in the outward world. Men feel
that they are in the hands of God ; that He speaks to them,
argues with them, expostulates, reproyes, exhorts, and persuades
them. And they know that they are resisting Him, when they
are striving to stifle this mysterious voice within them.
During the apostolic period the Spirit, in fulfilment of the proph-
ecy of Joel, was poured out on all classes of men. The effects
of his influence were, (1) The various spiritual gifts, whether
miraculous or ordinary, then so abundantly enjoyed. (2.) The
regeneration, holiness, zeal, and devotion of the multitudes added
to the Church. And (3.) The moral conviction of the truth, the
excitement of all the natural affections, temporary faith, repent-
ance, and reformation. The latter class of effects was just as
conspicuous and as undeniable as either of the others. And such
has been the experience of the Church in all ages. Whenever
and wherever the Spirit has been manifested to a degree in anv
measure analogous to the revelation of his presence and power on
the da}' of Pentecost, while many have been truly born of God,
more have usually been the subjects of influences which did not
issue in genuine conversion.
The evidence therefore from Scripture, and from experience, is
clear that the Holy Spirit is present with every human mind, and
enforces, with more or less power, whatever of moral or religious
truth the mind may have before it.
The Effects of Common Grace.
The effects produced by conniion grace, or this influence of the
Spirit comtnon to all men, are most important to the individual and
to the world. What the external world would be if left to the
blind operation of physical causes, without the restraining and
guiding influence of God's providential efficiency, that would the
world of mind be, in all its moral aud religious manifestations,
without the restraints and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There
ai'e two ways in which we may learn what tlie effect would be of
the withholding the Spirit from the minds of men. The flrst is,
the consideration of the effects of reprobation, as taught in Scrip-
ture and by experience, in the case of individual men. Such men
have a seared conscience. They are reckless and indifferent, and
entirely under the control of the evil passions of their nature.
This state is consistent with external decorum and polisli. Men
may be as whitened sepulchres. But this is a restraint which a
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 671
wise regard to their greatest selfish gratification places on the evil
principles wliich control them. The effects of reprobation are de-
picted in a fearful manner by the Apostle in the first chapter of his
Epistle to the Romans. Not only individuals, but peoples and
churches may be thus abandoned by the Spirit of God, and then
unbroken spiritual death is the inevitable consequence. But, in
the second place, the Scriptures reveal the effect of the entire
withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the control of rational creat-
ures, in the account which they give of the state of the lost, both
men and angels. Heaven is a place and state in which the Spirit
reigns witli absolute control. Hell is a place and state in which
the Spirit no longer restrains and controls. The presence or ab-
sence of the Spirit makes all the difference between heaven and
hell. To the general influence of the Spirit (or to common grace),
we owe, —
1. All the decorum, order, refinement, and virtue existing
among men. Mere fear of future punishment, the natural sense
of right, and the restraints of human laws, would prove feeble bar-
riers to evil, were it not for the repressing power of the Spirit,
which, like the pressure of the atmosphere, is universal and power-
ful, although unfelt.
2. To the same divine agent is due specially that genei'al fear
of God, and that religious feeling which prevail among men, and
which secure for the rites and services of religion in all Its forms,
the decorous or more serious attention which they receive.
3. Tlie Scriptures refer to this general Influence of the Spirit
those religious experiences, varied In character and degree, which
so often occur where genuine conversion, or regeneration does not
attend or follow. To this reference has already been made in a
general vvay aS a proof of the doctrine of common grace. The
great diversity of these religious experiences is due no doubt
partly to the different degrees of religious knowledge which men
possess ; partly to their diversity of culture and character ; and
partly to the measure of divine influence of which they are the
subjects. In all cases, however, there is in the first ])lace a con-
viction of the truth. All the great doctrines of religion have a
selt'-evldencinfi: lijiht ; an evidence of their truth to which nothino-
but the blindness and hardness of heart j)roduced by sin, can ren-
der the mind insensible. Men may argue themselves Into a theo-
retical (lisl)c'lii'f of the being of God, of the obligation of the moral
law, and of a future state of retribution. But as these truths
address themselves to our nioi'al constitution, which we cannot
672 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
change, no amount of sophistry can obscure their convincing light,
if our moral nature be aroused. The same is true also of the
Bible. It is the Word of God. It contains internal evidence of
being his Word. All that is necessary to produce an irresistible
conviction of its truth is that the veil which sin and the God of
this world have spread over the mind, should be removed. This is
done, at least sufficiently to admit light enough to produce con-
viction, whenever the moral elements of our nature assume their
legitimate power. Hence it is a matter of common observation
that a man passes suddenly from a state of scepticism to one of
firm belief, without any arguments being addressed to his under-
standing, but simply by a change in his inward moral state.
When, as the Bible expresses it, " the eyes of the heart " are thus
opened, he can no more doubt the truths perceived, than he can
doubt the evidence of his senses.
In the second place, with this conviction of the truths of religion
is connected an experience of their power. They produce to a
greater or less degree an effect upon the feelings appropriate to
their nature ; a conviction of sin, the clear perception that what
the Bible and the conscience teach of our guilt and pollution, pro-
duces self-condemnation, remorse, and self-abhorrence. These are
natural, as distinguished from gracious affections. They are ex-
perienced often by the unrenewed and the wicked. A sense of
God's justice necessarily produces a fearful looking for of judg-
ment. Those who sin, the Apostle says, know the righteous judg-
ment of God, that they who do such things are worthy of death.
(Rom. i. 32.) The attending conviction of entire helplessness ;
of tiie soul's utter inability either to make expiation for its guilt,
or to destroy the inward power of sin, and wash away its defile-
ment, tends to produce absolute despair. No human suffering is
more intolerable than that which is often experienced even in this
life from these sources. " Heu me miserum et nimis miserum !
nimis enim miserum, quem torquet conscientia sua quam fugere non
potest ! nimis enim miserum quem exspectat damnatio sua, quam
vitare non potest ! Nimis est infelix, qui sibi ipsi est horribilis ;
nimis infelicior, cui mors seterna erit sensibilis. Nimis aerumnosus,
quem terrent continui de sua infelicitate horrores." ^
It is also natural and according to experience, that the promise
of the Gospel, and the exhibition of tlie plan of salvation, con-
tained in the Scriptures, which commend themselves to the enlight-
1 Augustine, De Contrkione Cordis, Works, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1837, vol. vi. ap-
pendix, p. 1376, c.
§3.] COMMON GRACE. 673
ened conscience, should often appear not only as true but as suited
to the condition of the awakened sinner. Hence he receives the
Word with joy. He believes with a faith founded on tliis moral
evidence of the truth. This faith continues as long as the state of
mind by which it is produced continues. When that changes, and
the sinner relapses into his wonted state of insensibility, his faith
disappears. To this class of persons our Saviour refers when He
speaks of those who receive the Word in stony places or among
thorns. Of such examples of temporary faith there are numerous
instances given in the Scriptures, and they are constantly occurring
within our daily observation.
In the third place, the state of mind induced by these common
operations of the Spirit, often leads to reformation, and to an
externally religious life. The sense of the truth and importance
of the doctrines of the Bible constrains men often to great strict-
ness of conduct and to assiduous attention to religious duties.
The experiences detailed above are included in the " law work "
of which the older theologians were accustomed to speak as gen-
erally preceding regeneration and the exercise of saving faith in
Christ. They often occur before genuine conversion, and perhaps
more frequently attend it ; but nevertheless they are in many
cases neither accompanied nor followed by a real change of heart.
They may be often renewed, and yet those who are their subjects
return to their normal state of unconcern and worldliness.
No strictness of inward scrutiny, no microscopic examination or
delicacy of analysis, can enable an observer, and rarely the man
himself, to distinguish these religious exercises from those of the
truly regenerated. The words by Avhich they are described both
in the Scriptures and in ordinary Christian discourse, are the
same. Unrenewed men in the Bible are said to repent, to believe,
to be partakers of the Holy Ghost, and to taste the good Word of
God, and the powers of the world to come. Human language is
not adequate to express all the soul's experiences. The same word
must always represent in one case, or in one man's experience,
what it does not in the experience of another. That there is a
specific difference between the exercises due to common grace, and
those experienced by the true children of God, is certain. But
that difference does not reveal itself to the consciousness, or at
least, certainly not to the eye of an observer. " By their fruits ye
shall know them." This is the test given by our Lord. It is only
when these experiences issue in a holy life, that their distinctive
character is known.
VOL. II. 43
674 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
As to the nature of the Spirit's work, which He exercises, in a
greater or less degree, on the minds of all men, the words of our
Lord admonish us to speak with caution. " The wind bloweth
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not
tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one that
is born of the Spirit." (John iii. 8.) This teaches that the mode
of the Spirit's operation whether in regeneration or in conviction,
is inscrutable. If we cannot understand how our souls act on our
bodies, or how evil spirits act on our minds, the one being a famil-
iar fact of consciousness, and the other a clear fact of revelation, it
cannot be considered strange that we should not understand how
the Holy Spirit acts on the minds of men. There are certain
statements of the Bible, however, which throw some light on this
subject. In the first place, the Scriptures speak of God's reason-
ing with men ; of his teaching them and that inwardly by his
Spirit; of his guiding or leading them; and of his convincing,
reproving, and persuading them. These modes of representation
would seem to indicate " a moral suasion ; " an operation in accord-
ance with the ordinary laws of mind, consisting in the presenta-
tion of truth and urging of motives. In the second place, so far
as appears, this common influence of the Spirit is never exercised
except through the truth. In the third place, the moral and relig-
ious effects ascribed to it never rise above, so to speak, the natural
operations of the mind. The knowledge, the faith, the conviction,
the remorse, the sorrow, and the J03', which the Spirit is said to
produce by these common operations, are all natural affections or
exercises ; such as one man may measurably awaken in the minds
of other men. In the fourth place, these common influences of
the Sj)irit are all capable of being effectually resisted. In all these
respects this common grace is distinguished from the efficacious
operation of the Spirit to which the Scriptures ascribe the regen-
eration of the soul. The great truth, however, that concerns us
is that the Spirit of God is present with every human mind, re-
straining from evil and exciting to good ; and that to his pi-esence
and influence we are indebted for all the order, decorum, and vir-
tue, as well as the regard for religion and its ordinances, which
exist in the world. And consequently that the greatest calamity that
can befall an individual, a church, or a people, is that God should
take his Holy Spirit from them. And as this is a judgment which,
according to the Scriptures, does often come upon individuals,
churches, and people, we should above all things dread lest we
should grieve the Spirit or quench his influences. This is done by
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 675
resistance, by indulgence in sin, and especially, by denying his
agency and speaking evil of his work. " Whosoever speaketh a
word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him : but who-
soever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven
him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." (Matt,
xii. 32.)
§ 4. Efficacious Grace.
Besides those operations of the Spirit, which in a greater or less
degree are common to all men, the Scriptures teach that the cove-
nant of redemption secures the Spirit's certainly efficacious influ-
ence for all those who have been given to the Son as his inheri-
tance.
Why called Efficacious.
This grace is called efficacious not simply ah eventu. According
to one view the same influence at one time, or exerted on one per-
son, produces a saving effect ; and at other times, or upon other
persons, fails of such effect. In the one case it is called efficacious,
and in the other not. This is not what Augustinians mean by the
term. By the Semi-Pelagians, the Romanists, and the Arminians,
that influence of the Spirit which is exerted on the minds of all
men is called " sufficient grace." By the two former it is held to
be sufficient to enable the sinner to do that which will either merit
or secure larger degrees of grace which, if duly improved, will
issue in salvation. The Arminians admit that the fall of our race
has rendered all men utterly unable, of themselves, to do anything
truly acceptable in the sight of God. But they hold that this ina-
bility, arising out of the present state of human nature, is removed
by the influence of the Spirit given to all. This is called " gracious
ability " ; that is, an ability due to the grace, or the supernatural
influence of the Spirit granted to all men. On both these points
the language of the Remonstrant Declaration or Confession is ex-
plicit- It is there said, " Man has not saving faith from himself,
neither is he regenerated or converted by the force of his own free
will ; since, in the state of sin, he is not able of and by himself to
think, will, or do any good thing, — any good thing that is saving
in its nature, particularly conversion and saving faith. But it is
necessary that he be regenerated, and wholly renewed by God in
Christ, through the truth of the gospel and the added energy of
the Holy Spirit, — in intellect, affections, will, and all his facul-
ties, — so that he may be able rightly to perceive, meditate upon,
will, and accomplish that which is a saving good." ^ On the point
1 Confessio Remonstrant ium, xvii. 5; F.piscopii Opera, edit. Rotterdam, 1665, vol. ii. pp.88,
676 PART in. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
of sufficient grace the Declaration says : " Although there is the
greatest diversity in the degrees in which grace is bestowed in ac-
cordance with the divine will, yet the Holy Ghost confers, or at
least is ready to confer, upon all and each to whom the word of
faith is ordinarily preached, as much grace as is sufficient for gen-
erating faith and carrying forward their conversion in its successive
stages. Thus sufficient grace for faith and conversion is allotted not
only to those who actually believe and are converted, but also to
those who do not actually believe and are not in fact converted." ^
In the Apology for the Remonstrance, it is said, " The Remon-
strants asserted that the servitude to sin, to which men {per naturce
conditionem) in their natural state, are subject, has no place in a
state of grace. For they hold that God gives sufficient grace to
all who are called, so that they can be freed from that servitude,
and at the same time they have liberty of will to remain in it if
they choose." 2 In the Apology it is expressly stated, "Gratia
efficax vocatur . . . . ab eventu," which is said to mean, " Ut
statuatur gratia habere ex se sufficientem vim, ad producendum
consensum in voluntate, sed, quia vis ilia partialis est, non posse
exire in actum sine cooperaute liberae voluntatis humanse, ac
proinde, ut effijctura habeat, pendere a libera voluntate." ^ Lim-
borch ^ teaches the same doctrine. " Sufficiens vocatio, quando per
cooperationem liberl arbitrii sortitur suura effectum, vocatur effi-
cax."
Augustinians of course admit that common grace is in one sense
sufficient. It is sufficient to render men inexcusable for their im-
89, of second set. " Homo itaque salvificam fidem non babet ex seipso; neque ex arbitrii
sui liberi viribus regeneratur, aut convertitur: quandoquidem in statu peccati nihil boni,
quod quidem salutare bonum sit (cujusmodi imprimis est conversio et fides salvilica), ex
seipso, vel a seipso, vel cogitare potest, nedum velle, aut facere: sed necesse est, ut a Deo,
in Christo, per verbum evangelii, eique adjunctam Spiritus Sancti virtutem regeneretur,
atque totus renovetur; puta intellectu, aft'ectibus, voluntate, omnibusque viribus; ut salu-
taria bona recte possit intelligere, meditari, velle, ac perticere."
1 Confessio Remonstrnntiuin^ xvii. 8; p. 89, a, of second set. " Etsi vero maxima est gra-
tise disparitas, pro Uberrima scilicet voluntatis divin^e dispensatione: tamen Spiritus Sanc-
tus omnibus et singulis, quibus verbum fidei ordinarie prsedicatur, tantum gratia? confert,
aut saltem conferre paratus est, quantum ad fidem ingenerandum, et ad promovendum suis
gradibus salutarem ipsorum conversionem sufficit. Itaque gratia sufficiens ad fidem et con-
versionem non tantum iis obtingit, qui actu credunt et convertuntur: sed etiam iis, qui actu
ipso non credunt, nee reipsa convertuntur."
2 Apoloyia pro Confexsione Remonstrnntium, cap. vi. ; ul supra, p. 144, b, of second set.
" Keinonstrantes asserunt necessitatem sive servitutem istam peccati, cui homines, per naturae
conditionem subjecti sunt, locum non habere sub statu gratiae. Nam statuunt, vocatis om-
nibus gratiam suflicientem a Deo concedi, ita ut possint a servitute ilia liberari, et simul
manere in iis voluntatis libertatem, ut possint eidem servituti manere subjecti, si velint."
8 Ibid. cap. xvii. iii.; p. 191, b, of second set.
4 Theohgia Christiana, iv. xii. 8, edit. Amsterdam, 1715, p. 352, b.
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 677
penitence and unbelief. This Paul says even of the light of nature.
The heathen are without excuse for their idolatry, because the
eternal power and Godhead of the divine Being ai'e revealed to
them in his works. Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God.
(Rom. i. 20, 21.) So common grace is sufficient to convince men,
(1.) Of sin and of their need of redemption. (2.) Of the truth
of the gospel. (3.) Of their duty to accept its offers and to live in
obedience to its commands ; and (4.) Tliat their impenitence and
unbelief are due to themselves, to their own evil hearts ; that they
voluntarily prefer the world to the service of Christ. These
effects the grace common to all who hear the gospel tends to pro-
duce. These effects it does in fact produce in a multitude of cases,
and would produce in all were it not resisted and quenched. But
it is not sufficient to raise the spiritually dead ; to change the
heart, and to produce regeneration ; and it is not made to produce
these effects by the cooperation of the human will. This is a point
which need not be discussed separately. The Remonstrant and
Romish doctrine is true, if the other parts of their doctrinal system
are true ; and it is false if that system be erroneous. If the Au-
gustinian doctrine concerning the natural state of man since the
fall, and the sovereignty of God in election, be Scriptural, then it
is certain that sufficient grace does not become efficacious from the
cooperation of the human will. Those who hold the last men-
tioned doctrine reject both the others ; and those who hold the two
former of necessity reject the last. It is not, however, only in
virtue of its logical relation to other established doctrines that the
doctrine of sufficient grace is rejected. It may be proved to be
contrary to what the Scriptures teach on regeneration and the
mode in which it is effected. These arguments, however, may be
more properly presented when we come to the answer to the ques-
tion. Why the grace of God is efficacious in the work of conver-
sion?
Congruity.
Another erroneous view on this subject is that the influence of
tlie Spirit in conversion owes its efficacy to its congruity. By this
is sometimes meant its adaptation to the state of mind of him who
is its subject. When a man is in one state, the same influence,
both as to kind and degree, may fail to produce any serious impres-
sion ; when in a different and more favourable frame of mind, it
may issue in his true conversion. In this view the doctrine of
congruity does not differ from the view already considered. It
supposes that the subject of the Spirit's influence, in one state of
678 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
mind resists, and in another, submits to, and cooperates with it ,
and that its efficacy is in the end due to this cooperation.
Sometimes, however, more is meant than that the grace is con-
gruous to the state of mind of its subject. Cardinal Bellarmin
objects to the view above stated tliat it assumes that the reason why
one man believes and another disbelieves, is to be found in the free
will of the subject. This, he says, is directly contrary to what the
Apostle says in 1 Corinthians iv. 7, " Who maketh thee to differ ?
And what hast thou that thou didst not receive ? " " Nam," he
adds, " si duo sint, qui eandem concionatorem audiant, et eandem
interius inspirationem habeant, et unus credat, alter non credat,
nonne dicere poterit is qui crediderit, se discerni ab infideli, per
liberum arbitrium quia ipse inspirationem acceperit, quam alter
rejecit? nonne gloriari poterit contra infidelem, quod ipse Dei gra-
tiae cooperatus sit, quam ille contempsit ? et tamen Apostolus hoc
omnino prohibet." ^ Here the main principle which distinguishes
Anjrustinianism from all other schemes of doctrine is conceded.
Why does one man repent and believe the Gospel, while another
remains impenitent ? The Augustinian says it is because God.
makes them to differ. He gives to one what He does not give to
another. All Anti-Augustinians say that the reason is, that the
one cooperates with the grace of God, and the other does not ; or,
the one yields, and the other does not ; or, that the one resists, and
the other does not. Bellarmin here sides with Augustine and Paul.
His own theory, however, is a virtual retraction of the above men-
tioned concession. He says that the different results in the cases
supposed, are to be referred to the congruity between the influence
exerted and the state of mind of the person on whom that influence
is exerted. But this congruity is foreseen and designed. God
knows just what kind and degree of influence will be effectual in
determining the will of a given person, under given circumstances,
and in a given state of mind. And this influence he determines
to exert with the purpose of securing the sinner's conversion, and
with the certain foreknowledge of success. Bellarmin ^ says, " Ut
efficacia proveniat non tarn ex vehementia persuasionis, quam ex
dispositione voluntatis, quam Deus preevidet. Nimirum cum Deus
ita pi'oponit aliquid interna persuasione, ut videt voluntatem aptarn
esse ad consentiendum." And again, " Infallibilitas [rei] non
oriatur ex vehementia motionis divinaj, sed ex prajvisione aptitudi-
nis ipsius voluntatis."^ In one view this seems to refer the cause
1 De Gratia el Libera Arbiirio, I. xii.; Dispulationes, edit. Paris, 1608, vol. iv. p. 420, d.
2 Jbid. IV. ix. ; Dispntaliones, vol. iv. pp. 543 e, 544 a.
* See Turrettin, Institutio Theologice, locus xv. ques. iv.
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 679
of the difference between tlie believer and the unbeliever, to the
purpose of God ; as it is He who foresees and intends the issue
and adapts the means for the attainment of the end. But really
the cause of the difference is in the man himself. One man is sus-
ceptible and yielding ; another is hard and obstinate. Besides, this
view as well as the preceding, regards the influence by which I'e-
generation is effected, as a mere suasion, which is contrary to the
representations of Scripture. It ignores the Scriptural doctrine of
the natural state of man since the fall as one of spiritual death ;
and it professedly repudiates that of the divine sovereignty. It
cannot, therefore, be reconciled with the Scriptures, if those doc-
trines are taught, as all Augustinians believe, in the Word of God.
The Jesuits adopted much the same view as that presented by
Bellarmin. Molina, in his celebrated work, " Liberi arbitrii cum
gratise donis, divina prsescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et
reprobatione concordia," says, " Una et eadem est natura gratiae
sufficientis et efficacis ; a nostro arbitrio et libero consensu pendet,
ut efficax fiat nobis consentientibus, aut inefficax, nobis dissentien-
tibus. Deus infallibiliter operatur ope scientice medice : vidit per
scientiam rerum sub conditione futurarum, quem hasc aut ilia
gratia etfectum habitura sit in homine, si detur ; ponit decretum
talem larglendi, cum qua prasvidet consensuram voluntatem ; talis
gratia est efficax, — itaque prsescientia non fallitur." ^
Neither the Symbols of the Romish Church, nor the majority of
its theologians adopt this doctrine of Bellarmin. They make the
difference between sufficient and efficacious grace to be determined
simply by the event. One man cooperates with the grace he re-
ceives, and it becomes efficacious ; another does not cooperate, and
it remains without saving effect. On this point the Council of
Trent ^ decided, " Si quis dixerit, liberum hominis arbitrium a Deo
motum, et excitatum nihil cooperari assentiendo Deo excitant!
atque vocanti, quo ad obtinendam justificationis gratiam se dis-
ponat, ac praepai'et, neque posse dissentire, si velit, sed velut in-
anime quoddam nihil omnino agere, mereque passive se habere,
anathema sit." " According to Catholic principles," says Mohler,^
" two agencies are combined in the holy work of regeneration, a
human and divine, which interpenetrate each other, when the work
is effected ; so that it is a divine-human work. God's holy power
goes before, exciting, awakening, and quickening, without the man's
1 See Kijllner's SymboUk, Hamburg, 1844, vol. ii. p. 334.
2 Sess. VI. can. iv. ; Streitwolf, Libri Symbolici, Gottingen, 1846, p. 34.
8 SymboUk, 6th edit. Mainz, 1843, p. 105.
680 PART m. Ch. XIV.- VOCATION.
meriting, procuring, or determining this influence, but he must
yield to, and freely follow it." This he confirms by citing the lan-
guage of the Council of Trent. ^ " Ut, qui per peccata a Deo
aversi erant, per ejus excitantem atque adjuvantem gratiam ad
convertendum se ad suam ipsorum justificationem eidem gratiae
libere assentiendo, et cooperando, disponantur : ita ut tangente Deo
cor hominis per Spiritus Sancti illuminationem, neque homo ipse
nihil omnino agat, inspirationem illam recipiens, quippe qui illam et
abjicere potest, neque tamen sine gratia Dei movere se ad justitiam
coram illo libera sua voluntate possit."
Augustinian Doctrine of Efficacious Grace.
According to the Augustinian doctrine the efficacy of divine
grace in regeneration depends neither upon its congruity nor upon
the active cooperation, nor upon the passive non-resistance of its
subject, but upon its nature and the purpose of God. It is the
exercise of " the mighty power of God," who speaks and it is done.
This is admitted to be the doctrine of Augustine himself. He says,
" Non lege atque doctrina insonante forinsecus, sed interna et
occulta, mirabili ac ineffabili potestate operari Deum in cordibus
hominum non solum veras revelationes, sed bonas etiam volun-
tates." 2 " Nolentem praevenit, ut velit ; volentem subsequitur,
ne frustra velit." ^
The Jansenists, the faithful disciples of Augustine, endeavoured
to revive his doctrine in the Roman Church. Among the propo-
sitions selected from their writings and condemned by Pope
Clement XI. in the famous Bull, Unigenitus, are the following;
" Num. ix.. Gratia Christi est gratia suprema, sine qua Christum
confiiteri nunquam possumus, et cum qua nunquam ilium abnega-
mus. 1 Cor. xii. 3. Num. x.. Gratia est nianus omnipotentis
Dei, jubentis et facientis quod jubet. Mar. ii. 11. Num. xix., Dei
gratia nihil aliud est quam ejus omnipotens voluntas : haec est idea,
quam Deus ipse nobis tradit in omnibus suis Scripturis. Rom.
xiv. 4. Num. xxi., Gratia Jesu Christi est gratia fortis, potens,
suprema, invincibilis, utpote quge est operatio voluntatis omnipo-
tentis, sequela et imitatio operationis Dei incarnantis et resusci-
tantis filium suum. 2 Cor. v. 21. Num. xxiv., Justa idea,
1 Sess. VI. cap. iv. ; Streitwolf, Libri SymboUci, p. 23.
2 De Gratia Christi (xxiv.), 25; Woi-ks, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1838, vol. x. pp. 545,
d, 546, a.
8 Enchiridion de Fide, Spe et Charitate (xxxii.), 9; Works, vol. vi. p. 363, a. For a full
exposition of Augustine's Theory see Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, ch. xiii. An-
dover, 1840, pp. 194-218.
§ 4 ] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 681
quam centnrio habet de omnipotentia Del et Jesu Christi in sanan-
dis corporibus solo motu su^e voluntatis, est imago idese, quas
haberi debet de omnipotentia suae gratise in sanandis animabus a
cupiditate. Luc. vii. 7." ^
It is not a matter of doubt or dispute that the Reformed Church
adopted the Augustinian doctrine on this subject. In the " Second
Helvetic Confession," it is said, " Quantum ad bonum et ad virtu-
tes, intellectus hominis, non recte judicat de divinis ex semetipso.
.... Constat vero mentem vel intellectum, ducem esse volun-
tatis, cum autem coecus sit dux, claret, quousque et voluntas per-
tingat. Proinde nullum est ad bonum homini arbitrium liberum
nondum renato, vires nullse ad perficiendum bonum In
regeneratione .... voluntas non tantum mutatur per Spiritum,
sed etiam instruitur facultatibus, ut sponte velit et possit bonum.
.... Observandum est — regenerates in boni electione et opera-
tione, non tantum agere passive, sed active. Aguntur enim a Deo,
ut agant ipsi, quod agunt."'-^
The Synod of Dort,^ " Omnes homines in peccato concipiun-
tur .... inepti ad omne bonum salutare . . . . et absque Spirit-
us Sancti regenerantis gratia, ad Deum redire, naturam deprava-
tam corrigere, vel ad ejus correctionem se disponere nee volunt,
nee possunt." " Fides Dei donum est, non eo, quod a Deo hominis
arbitrio offeratur, sed quod iiomini reipsa conferatur, inspiretur, et
infundatur."^ Quando Deus .... veram in electis conversionem
operatur, non tantum evangelium illis externe praedicari curat et
mentem eorum per Spiritum Sanctum potenter illuminat, ....
sed ejusdem etiam Spiritus regenerantis efficacia ad intima hominis
penetrat, cor clausum aperit, durum emollit, .... voluntati
novas qualitates infundit, facitque eam ex mortua vivam, ox mala
bonam, ex nolente volentem." ^
The following proposition contains one of the positions assumed
by Remonstrants on which the Synod was called to decide. " Op-
eratio gratise in prima conversione indifferens est et resistibilis, ut
per eam possit homo converti vel non converti : nee sequatur ejus
conversio nisi libero assensu ad eam se determinet, et converti
velit." On this proposition the Theologians of the Palatinate in
their " Judicium," after referring to the Remonstrant idea that
regeneration is effected by moral suasion, say, " Scriptura vero,
1 See Herzog's Encyklopddie, Art. Unigenitus.
2 IX. ; Niemej'er, Colltciio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, pp. 479, 480.
8 Cap. III. art. iii. ; Nieineyer, p. 709.
4 Cap. III. art. xiv; Jbid. p. 711.
6 Cap. III. art. xi. ; JblJ. p. 710.
682 PART in. ch. XIV. — vocation.
etsi moralem (qiiam vocant) suasionem non removet ab hoc nego-
tio (quid enim est totum ministerium reconciliationis, quam ejus-
modi commendatio ac suasio ? 2 Cor. v. 18-20), praecipuam ta-
men vim conversionis in ea minime coUocat, verum in actione
longe diviniore, qua? efficacia nee creationi, nee resuscitationi mor-
tuorum quicquam concedat Et irresistibilis quideni est turn
ex parte gratise Dei, turn ex parte voluntatis. Ex parte gratice :
quia efficax Dei operatio est in actu posita, cui nemo potest resist-
ere, Rom. ix. 19, prout Christus de gratia sapientise Apostolis
datse dixit : cui omnes non poterunt resistere, Luc. xxi. 15
Ex parte voluntatis : nam subdita gratia efficaci jam non vult
resistere : et quia non vult, necessario non vult, sicque resistere
velle non potest salva sua libertate." ^
Tiie " Westminster Confession " ^ says, " All those whom God
hath predestinated unto life, and those only. He is pleased, in his
appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and
Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by
nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their
minds, spiritually and savingly, to understand the things of God,
taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of
flesh ; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining
them to that which is good ; and effectually drawing them to Jesus
Christ ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his
grace.
" II. This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone,
not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive
therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit,
he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace
offered and conveyed in it.
" III. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved
by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, where, and how
He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapa-
ble of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word."
In the " Larger Catechism," ^ effectual calling is declared to be
" the work of God's almighty power and grace."
The Main Principle Involved.
These authoritative declarations of the faith of the Reformed
Church agree as to the one simple, clear, and comprehensive state-
1 Acta Synodi DordrechtancB, edit. Leyden, 1620, pp. 138, 139, of second set.
2 Chapter x. §§ 1-3.
8 Answer to the 67th question.
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 683
ment, that efficacious grace is tlie almighty power of God. There
are, as has been before remarked, three classes into which all
events of which we have any knowledge may be arranged. First,
those which are produced by the ordinary operations of second
causes as guided and controlled by the providential agency of God.
Secondly, those events in the external world which are produced by
the simple volition, or immediate agency of God, without the co-
operation of second causes. To this class all miracles, properly so
called, belong. Thirdly, those effects produced on the mind, heart,
and soul, by the volition, or immediate agency of the onmipotence
of God. To this class belong, inward revelation, inspiration, mirac-
ulous powers, as the gift of tongues, gift of healing, etc., and re-
generation.
Efficacious Crrace Mysterious and Peculiar.
If this one point be determined, namely, that efficacious grace is
the almighty power of God, it decides all questions in controversy
on this subject.
1. It is altogether mysterious in its operations. Its effects are
not to be explained rationally, i. e., by the laws which govern our
intellectual and moral exercises. To this aspect of the case our
Lord refers in John iii. 8, "The wind bloweth where-it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
Cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of the
Spirit." Volumes have been written on the contrary hypothesis ;
which volumes lose all their value if it be once admitted that re-
generation, or effectual calling, is the work of omnipotence. No
one is hardy enough to attempt to explain how the efficiency of
God operates in creation ; or how the mere volition of Christ healed
the sick or raised the dead. Neither would men attemj)! to explain
how Christ raises the spiritually dead, did they believe that it was
a simple work of almighty power.
2. Another equally obvious corollary of the above proposition is,
that there is a specific difference between not only the providential
efficiency of God and efficacious grace, but also between the latter
and what is called common, or sufficient grace. It is not a differ-
ence in degree, or in circumstances, or in congruity, but the oper-
ations are of an entirely different kind. There is no analogy be-
tween an influence securing or promoting mental development, or
the formation of moral character, and the efficiency exerted in
raisincr the dead.
684 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
Not Moral Suasion.
3. It is no less clear that efficacious grace is not of the nature of
"moral suasion." By moral suasion is meant the influence exerted
by one mind over the acts and states of another mind, by the pres-
entation of truth and motives, by expostulations, entreaty, appeals,
etc. Under the influence of this kind of moral power, the mind
yields or refuses. Its decision is purely its own, and within its own
power. There is nothing of all this in the exercise of omnipotence.
Healing the sick by a word, is an essentially different process from
healing him by medicine. A living man may be persuaded not to
commit suicide ; but a dead man cannot be persuaded into life.
If regeneration be effected by the volition, the command, the al-
mighty power of God, it certainly is not produced by a process of
argument or persuasion.
Efficacious Grace Acts Immediately.
4. It is a no less obvious conclusion that the influence of the
Spirit acts immediately on the souK All effects in the ordinary
dealings of God with his creatures are produced through the
agency of second causes. It is only in miracles and in the work
of regeneration that all second causes are excluded. When Christ
said to the leper, " I will ; be thou clean," nothing intervened be-
tween his volition and the effect. And when He put clay on the
eyes of the blind man, and bade him wash in the pool of Siloam,
there was nothing in the properties of the clay or of the water
that cooperated in the restoration of his sight. In like manner
nothing intervenes between the volition of the Spirit and the re-
generation of the soul. Truth may accompany or attend the woi'k
of the Spirit, but it has no cooperation in the production of the
effect. It may attend it, as the application of the clay attended
the miracle of restoring sight to the blind man ; or as Naaman's
bathing in the Jordan attended the healing of his leprosy. It is
however to be remembered that the word regeneration (or its
equivalents) is used, sometimes in a limited, and sometimes in a
comprehensive sense. The translation of a soul from the kingdom
of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, is a z^eat event.
It involves a varied and comprehensive experience. There is
much that usually precedes and attends the work of regeneration
in the limited sense of the word ; and there is much that of ne-
cessity and (in the case of adults) immediately succeeds it. In all
that thus precedes and follows, the truth has an important, in some
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 685
aspects, an essential part in the work. In most cases conviction of
the truth, and of sin, a sense of shame, of remorse, of sorrow,
and of anxiety, and longing desires after peace and security, pre-
cede the work of regeneration ; and faith, joy, love, hope, grati-
tude, zeal, and other exercises follow it, in a greater or less degree.
In all these states and acts, in everything, in short, which falls
within the sphere of consciousness, the truth acts an essential
part. These states and acts are the effects of the truth attended
by the power, or demonstration of the Spirit. But regeneration
itself, the infusion of a new life into the soul, is the immediate
work of the Spirit. There is here no place for the use of means
any more than in the act of creation or in working a miracle.
Moses' smiting the rock attended the outflow of the water, but
had not the relation of a means to an effect. So the truth (in the
case of adults) attends the work of regeneration, but is not the
means by which it is effected. Much preceded and much fol-
lowed the healing of the man with a withered arm ; but the res-
toration of vitality to the limb, being an act of divine omnipotence,
was effected without the cooperation of secondary causes. There
are two senses in which it may be said that we are begotten by
the truth. First, when the word to beget (or regeneration), is
meant to include the whole process, not the mere act of imparting
life, but all that is preliminary and consequent to that act. The
word " to beget " seems to be used sometimes in Scripture, and
very often in the writings of theologians in this wide sense. And
secondly, when the word by expresses not a cooperating cause, or
means, but simply an attending circumstance. Men see by the
light. Without light vision is impossible. Yet the eyes of the
blind are not opened by means of the light. In like manner all
the states and acts of consciousness preceding or attending, or
following regeneration, are by the trutli ; but regeneration itself,
or the imparting spiritual life, is by the immediate agency of the
Spirit.
The Use of the Word Physical.
This idea is often expressed by the word physical. The School-
men spoke of " a physical influence of the Spirit." The Pope
condemned Jansenius for teaching, " Gratia de se efficax vei'e,
realiter et physice praemovens et praedeterminans, immutabiliter,
infallibiliter insuperabiliter, et indeclinabiliter necessaria est," etc.
Thus also Turrettin says : ^ " Gratise efficacis motio, nee physica
1 XV. iv. 18; edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 461, 462.
686 PART III. Cir. XIV.— VOCATION.
nee ethica proprie dicenda est, sed supernaturalis et divina, qufe
utramque illani crxf-cn-v quadantenus includit. Non est simpliciter
physica, quia agitur de facultate morali, quae congruenter naturae
sua3 moveri debet ; nee simpliciter ethica, quasi Deus objective
solum ageret, et leni suasione uteretur, quod pertendebant Pelagi-
ani. Sed supernaturalis est et divina, quae transcendit omnia hasc
genera. Interim aliquid de ethico et .phjsico participat, quia et
potenter et suaviter, grate et invicte, operatur Spiritus ad nostri
conversionem. Ad modum physicum pertinet, quod Deus Spiritu
suo nos creat, regenerat, cor carneum dat, et efficienter habitus su-
pernaturales fidei et charitatis nobis infundit. Ad moralem, quod
verbo docet, inclinat, suadet et rationibus variis tanquam vinculis
amoris ad se trahit." Here as was common with the writers of
that age, Turrettin includes under " conversion," what is now
more frequently distinguished under the two heads of regeneration
and conversion. The former including what the Spirit does in the
soul, and the latter what the sinner, under his influence, is in-
duced to do. With his usual clearness he refers Avhat is now
meant by regeneration to the physical operation of the Spirit ; and
all that belongs to conversion or the voluntary turning of the soul
to God, to the mediate influence of the Holy Ghost through the
truth.
Owen, in his work on the Spirit, strenuously insists on the
necessity of this physical operation. He uses the words conver-
sion and regeneration interchangeably, as including all that Tur-
rettin understands by them. And hence he says that in the work
of conversion there is both a physical and moral influence exerted
by the Spirit. Speaking of moral suasion, he says, " That the
Holy Spirit doth make use of it in the regeneration or conversion
of all that are adult, and that either immediately in and by the
preaching of it, or by some other application of light and truth
unto the mind derived from the Word ; for by the reasons, mo-
tives, and persuasive arguments which the Word affords, are our
minds affected, and our souls wrought upon in our conversion unto
God, whence it becomes our reasonable obedience. And there are
none ordinarily converted, but they are able to give some account
by what considerations they were prevailed on thereunto. But,
we say that the whole work, or the whole of the work of the
Holy Ghost in our conversion, doth not consist herein ; but there
is a real, physical work, whereby He infuseth a gracious principle
of spiritual life into all that are effectually converted, and really
regenerated, and without which there is no deliverance fz'om the
§4.] EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 687
state of sin and death which we have described ; which among
others may be proved by the ensuing arguments. The principal
arguments in this case will ensue in our proofs from the Scriptures,
that there is a real, physical work of the Spirit on the souls of
men in their regeneration. That all He doth, consisteth not in
this moral suasion, the ensuing reasons do sufficiently evince." ^
It is too obvious to need remark that the word physical Is
used antithetically to moral. Any influence of the Spirit that is
not simply moral by the way of argument and persuasion, is called
physical. The word, perhaps, is as appropriate as any other; if
there be a necessity for any discriminating epithet In the case.
All that is important is, on the one hand, the negation that the
work of regeneration is effected by the moral power of the truth
in the hands of the Spirit ; and, upon the other, the affirmation
that there is a direct exercise of almighty power in giving a new
principle of life to the soul.
This doctrine both in what it denies and In Avhat it affirms, is
not peculiar to the older theologians. The modern German divines,
each in the language of his peculiar philosophy, recognize that
apart from the change in the state of the soul which takes place
In the sphere of consciousness, and which is produced by God
through the truth, there Is a communication by his direct efficiency
of a new form of life. This is sometimes called the life of Christ ;
sometimes the person of Christ; sometimes his substance; some-
times his divine-human nature, etc. They teach that man Is
passive in regeneration, but active in repentance.^ " Man is every
moment unspeakably more than lies In consciousness," says Eb-
rard.^ Tills Is true, and it should teach us that there is much per-
taining to our Internal life, which it Is impossible for us to analyze
and explain.
Efficacious Grace Irresistible.
5. It will of course be admitted that, if efficacious grace Is the
exercise of almighty power it is irresistible. That common grace,
or that influence of the Spirit which Is granted more or less to all
men is often effectually resisted, is of course admitted. That the
true believer often grieves and quenches the Holy Spirit, Is also
no doubt true. And in short that all those influences which are
In their nature moral, exerted through the truth, are capable of
1 ni'tujuaToAoyta, Or a Discourse amcerning the JJoly Spirit, book ill. v. 18, 19, edit. London,
1674, p. 2fil.
2 See Ebrard, Doc/mntik, iii. i. 2, § 447; edit. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ii. p. 328.
8 Ibid. § 444, vol. ii. p. 319.
688 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
being opposed, is also beyond dispute. But if the special work of
regeneration, in the narrow sense of that word, be the effect of
almighty power, then it cannot be resisted, any more than the act
of creation. The effect follows immediately on the will of God,
as when He said let there be light, and light was.
The Soul passive in Regeneration.
6. It follows, further, from the same premises, that the soul is
passive in regeneration. It is the subject, and not the agent of
the change. The soul cooperates, or, is active in what precedes
and in what follows the chano;e, but the change itself is somethino:
experienced, and not something done. The blind and the lame
who came to Christ, may have undergone much labour in getting
into his presence, and they joyfully exerted the new power im-
parted to them, but they were entirely passive in the moment of
healing. They in no way cooperated in the production of that
effect. The same must be true in regeneration, if regeneration
be the effect of almighty power as much as the opening the eyes
of the blind or the unstopping by a word the ears of the deaf.
Regeneration Instantaneous.
7. Regeneration, according to this view of the case, must be
instantaneous. There is no middle state between life and death.
If regeneration be a making alive those before dead, then it must
be as instantaneous as the quickening of Lazarus. Those who re-
gard it as a protracted process, either include in it all the states
and exercises which attend upon conversion ; or they adopt the
theory that regeneration is the result of moral suasion. If the
work of omnipotence, an effect of a mere Abolition on the part of
God, it is of necessity instantaneous. God bids the sinner live ;
and he is alive, instinct with a new and a divine life.
An Act of Sovereign G-race.
8. It follows, also, that regeneration is an act of sovereign grace.
If a tree must be made good before the fruit is good ; the good-
ness of the fruit cannot be the reason which determines him who
has the power to change the tree from bad to good. So if works
spiritually good are the fruits of regeneration, then they cannot be
the ground on which God exerts his life-giving power. If, there-
fore, the Scriptures teach the doctrine of efficacious grace in the
Augustinian sense of those terms, then they teach that regenera-
tion is a sovereign gift. It cannot be granted on the sight or fore-
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 689
sight of anything good in the subjects of this saving change. None
of those whom Christ healed, pretended to seek the exercise of his
ahnighty power in their behalf on the ground of their peculiar
goodness, much less did they dream of referring the restoration of
their sight or health to any cooperation of their own with his om-
nipotence.
§ 5. Proof of the Doctrine.
Common Consent.
1. The first argument in proof of the Augustinian doctrine of
efficacious grace, is drawn from common consent. All the great
truths of the Bible are impressed on the convictions of the people
of God ; and find expression in unmistakable language. This is
done in despite of the theologians, who often ignore or reject these
truths in their formal teachings. There are in fact but two views
on this subject. According to the one, regeneration is the effect
of the mighty power of God ; according to the other, it is the re-
sult of moral suasion. This latter may be understood to be noth-
ing more than what the moral trutlis of the Bible are in virtue of
their nature adapted to produce on the minds of men. Or, it mav
characterize the nature of the Spirit's influence as analogous to
that by which one man convinces or persuades another. It is from
its nature one which may be effectually resisted. All those, there-
fore, who hold to this theory of moral suasion, in either of its
forms, teach that this influence is effectual or not, according to the
determination of the subject. One chooses to yield, and another
chooses to refuse. Every man may do either. Now, infants are
confessedly incapable of moral suasion. Infants, therefore, cannot
be the subjects of regeneration, if regeneration be effected by a
process of rational persuasion and conviction. But, according to
the faith of the Church Universal, infants may be renewed by the
Holy Ghost, and must be thus born of the Spirit, in order to enter
the kingdom of God. It therefore follows that the faith, the in-
wrought conviction of the Church, the aggregate body of God's
true and professing people, is against the doctrine of moral suasion,
and in favour of the doctrine that regeneration is effected by the
immediate almighty power of the Spirit. There is no possibility of
its operating, in the case of infants, mediately through the truth as
apprehended by the reason. It is hard to see how this argument
is to be evaded. Those who are consistent and sufficiently inde-
pendent, admit its force, and rather than give up their theory, deny
the possibility of infant regeneration. But even this does not much
VOL. II. 44
690 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
help the matter. A place outside of the faith of the universal
Church IS a very unpleasant position. It is, moreover, unsafe and
untenable. The whole Church, led and taught by the Spirit of
Truth, cannot be wrong, and the metaphysicians and theorists alone
right. The error of the Papists as to the authority of the Church
as a teacher, was twofold : first, in rendering it paramount to the
Scriptures ; and secondly, in understanding by the Church, not the
body of Christ filled by his Spirit, but the mass of unconverted
Avicked men gathered with the true people of God within the pale
of an external organization. With them the Church consists of
that external commonwealth of which the Pope is the head, and to
which all belong who acknowledge his authority. It is a matter
of very small moment what such a body may believe. But if we
understand by the Church the aggregate of the true children of
God, men renewed, guided, and taught by the Holy Spirit, then
what they agree in believing, must be true. This universality of
belief is a fact which admits of no rational solution, except that
the doctrine thus believed is revealed in the Scriptures, and taught
by the Spirit. This argument is analogous to that for the
being of God founded upon the general belief of the existence of
a Supreme Being among all nations. It is a philosopliical maxim
that " What all men believe must be true." This principle does
not apply to the facts of history or science, the evidence of which
is present only to the minds of the few. But it does apply to all
facts, the evidence of which is contained either in the constitution
of our nature or in a common extei'nal revelation. If what all
men believe must be accepted as a truth i^evealed in the constitu-
tion of human nature, what all Christians believe must be ac-
cepted as a truth taught by the Word and the Spirit of God. The
fact that there are many theoretical, speculative, or practical athe-
ists in the world, neither invalidates nor M-eakens the argument for
the being of God, founded upon the general convictions of men ;
so neither does the fact that theorists and speculative theologians
deny the possibility of infant regeneration either invalidate or
weaken the argument for its truth, founded on the faith of the
Church Universal. But if infants may be subjects of regenera-
tion, then the influence by wliich regeneration is effected is not a
moral suasion, but the simple volition of Him whose will is omnip-
otent.
Argument from Analogy.
2. A second argument, although most weighty, is nevertheless
very difficult adequately to present. Happily its force does not
§ 5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 691
depend on the clearness or fulness of its presentation. Every mind
will apprehend it for itself. It is founded on that analogy between
the external and spiritual world, between matter and mind, which
pervades all our forms of thought and language, and Avhich is as-
sumed and sanctioned in the Word of God. We borrow from the
outward and visible world all the terms by which we express our
mental acts and states. We attribute sight, hearing, taste, and feel-
ing to the mind. We speak of the understanding as dark, the heart
as hard, the conscience as seared. Strength, activity, and clearness,
are as truly attributes of the mind, as of material substances and
agencies. Dulness and acuteness of intellect are as intelligible
forms of speech, as when these characteristics are predicated of a
tool. Sin is a leprosy. It is a defilement, a pollution, something to
be cleansed. The soul is dead. It needs to be quickened, to be
renewed, to be cleansed, to be strengthened, to be guided. The
eyes of the mind must be opened, and its ears unstopped. It would
be impossible that there should be such a transfer of modes of ex-
pression from the spliere of the outward and material to that of
the inward and spiritual, if there were not a real analogy and in-
timate relation between the two. A feeble or diseased mind is
scarcely more a figurative mode of speech than a feeble or dis-
eased body. The one may be strengthened or healed as well as
the other. The soul may be purified as literally as the body.
Birth and the new-birth, are equally intelligible and literal forms
of expression. The soul may be quickened as really as the body.
Death in the one case is not more a figure of speech than it is in
the other. When the body dies, it is only one form of activity
that ceases ; all the active properties belonging to it as matter re-
main. When the soul is dead, it also is entirely destitute of one
form of life, while intellectual activity remains.
Such being the state of the case ; such being the intimate rela-
tion and analogy between the material and spiritual, and such being
the consequent law of thought and language which is universal
among men, and which is recognized in Scripture, we are not at
liberty to explain the language of the Bible when speaking of the
sinful state of men, or of the method of recovery from that state,
as purely metaphorical, and make it mean much or little according
to our good pleasure. Spiritual death is as real as corporeal death.
The (lead body is not more insensible and powerless in relation to
the objects of sense, than the soul, when sj)iritually dead, is to the
things of the Spirit. This insensibility and helplessness are [)re-
cisely what the wr--' 'isad in both cases is meant to express. It is
692 PART ni. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
as literal in the one case as in the other. It is on the ground of
this analogy that much of the language descriptive of the moral
and spiritual state of man, used in the Bible, is founded. And
the account given of the mode of his recovery from his estate of
sin has the same foundation. As the blind could not open their
own eyes, or the deaf unstop their own ears, or the dead quicken
themselves in their graves ; as they could not prepare themselves
for restoration, or cooperate in effecting it, so also with the blind,
the deaf, and the dead in sin. The cure in both cases must
be supernatural. It can be accomplished by nothing short of al-
mighty power. One grand design of Christ's miracles of healing
was to teach this very truth. They were intended to teach the
sinner that his case was beyond all creature-help; that his only
hope was in the almighty, and unmerited grace of Christ, to whom
he must come and to whom he must submit. " As many as
touched [Him] were made perfectly whole." Their cure was by
no medicinal process. It was not a gradual work. It was not a
change to be understood and accounted for by the laws of matter
or mind. It was due to the simple volition of an almighty will.
As there have been persons disposed to give the rationale of these
cures ; to explain them on the theory of animal magnetism, of oc-
cult forces, or of the power of the imagination, so there are those
who prefer to explain the process of regeneration on rational prin-
ciples, and to show how it is accomplished by moral suasion, and
how it depends for its success on the cooperation of the subject of
the work. This is not the Scriptural account. Our Lord said to
the leper, I will ; be thou clean ; as he said to the winds. Be still.
There is another view of the subject. As the Bible recognizes
and teaches this analogy between the material and spiritual worlds,
so it constantly assumes a like analogy between the relation which
God sustains to the one and the relation which He sustains to the
other. He has given to his creatures, the aggregate of whom con-
stitutes nature, their properties, attributes, and powers. These are
not inert. They act constantly and'each according to its own laws.
What we regard as the operations of nature, especially in the
external world, are the effects of these agencies, that is, of the
efficiency of second causes, which God has ordained, and which
act with uniformity and certainty, so that like causes always pro-
duce like effects. God, however, is everywhere present witli his
creatures, not only upholding, but guiding, so that the effects
produced, in the infinite diversity of vegetable and animal forms,
are indicative of an everywhere present and everywhere active
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 69B
intelligence. In the exercise of this potentia ordinata God acts
uniformly according to the laws which He has ordained. But
the Scriptures teach that God has not limited Himself to this
ordered action. He is over, as well as in all things. He controls
the operations of the laws of nature so as to produce given results.
He so directs the agencies that produce rain, that it rains at one
time and place and not at others, as seems to Him good. He so
controls the winds that they sink navies in the depths of the sea,
or waft the richly freighted vessel to its desired haven. This provi-
dential control, everywhere distinguished from his providential
efficiency, ov potentia ordinata^ is universal and constant, extend-
ing even to the casting of the lot, the flight of an arrow, or the
falling of a sparrow. In all this providential control, however,
God acts with and through second causes. It was not by a mere
volition that He scattered the Spanish Armada ; He made the
winds and the waves his instruments. The Bible, however, teaches
that He is not confined to this use of means ; that He intervenes
by his immediate efficiency producing effects by his simple volition
without any intervention of second causes. In such cases the
effect is to be referred exclusively to his almighty power. These
special interventions of God, for what we know, may be, and prob-
ably are, innumerable. However this may be, it is certain that
the Bible is full of recorded cases of this kind. All his supernat-
ural revelations, all inspiration and prophecy, all supernatural gifts,
and all miracles, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, be-
long to this class. There were no second causes employed in reveal-
ing the future to the mind of the ancient seer, or in healing the sick,
or in opening the eyes of the blind, or in raising the dead by a word.
In strict analogy to this relation of God to the external world,
is, according to the Scriptures, his relation to his rational and moral
creatures. They have their essential attributes and faculties.
Those faculties act according to established laws ; for there are
laws of mind as well as laws of matter, and the one are as uniform
and as imperative as the otiier. Mental action, not in accordance
with the laws of mind, is insanity. God is in all his rational creat-
ures, sustaining them and all their faculties. He is, moreover,
over them and out of them, controlling and guiding them at his
pleasure, in perfect consistency with their free agency. He re-
strains the wrath of men. He puts it into the hearts of the wicked
to be favourable to his people. He conducts all the progress of
history, overruling the minds of men, with unerring certaintv and
infinite wisdom. All this is mediate government ; a rule exercised
694 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
not only according to tlie laws of human agency, but through the
rational influences by which that agency is determined in its opera-
tions. In like manner in his dealings with his people by the
Spirit, He argues, remonstrates, reproves, exhorts, excites, com-
forts, and strengthens, through the truth. But He is not confined
to this mediate action. He operates when, where, and how He
sees fit, without the intervention of any second cause. By a word,
or a volition, raising the spiritually dead, opening the eyes of the
heart, renewing the will, communicating what the Scriptures call
a new nature.
There are men who deny the providential intervention of God
in nature and in the government of the world. To them the world
is a great mechanism, which, admitting it to have been framed by
an intelligent first cause, does not need the constant supervision
and intervention of its Maker to keep it in successful operation.
There are others who acknowledge the necessity of such providen-
tial intervention for the preservation of second causes in their
activity, but deny anything beyond this potentia ordinata of God.
They deny any special providence. Events in the natural world
and among the nations of the earth, are not determined by his con-
trol, but by natural causes and the uncontrolled free agency of
men. And there are others, who admit not only the general con-
cursus or cooperation of the first, with all second causes, but also
the special providence of God, and yet who insist that He always
operates through means ; He never intervenes by the immediate
exercise of his power ; there can be no such thing as a miracle, in
the ordinary and proper sens^ of that word. In like manner in
reference to the relation of God to moral and rational creatures,
there are those who deny that He is anything more than their
creator. Having made them, He leaves them entirely to their own
control. He neither positively upholds them in being ; nor does
He control them by an operation on their minds by truth and mo-
tives j)resented and urged by his S|)irit. There are others who
admit the universal agency of God in sustaining rational creatures,
and who are willing to concede that He operates on them according
to the laws of mental action, as one mind may influence other
minds ; but they deny any more than this. They deny any mira-
cles in the sphere of grace, any effects produced by the immediate
exertion of the omnipotence of God.
It is a strono; aro-ument in favour of the Ausustinian doctrine
of efficacious grace, which teaches that regeneration is an act of
almighty power, or, in its subjective sense, an effect produced in
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 695
the soul by tlie omnipotence of God, that it is in analogy with the
whole teachino; of the Bible as to the relation between the outward
and spiritual world, and as to the relation in which God stands to
the one and to the other. This doctrine assumes nothing beyond
what is recognized as true in every other department of the uni-
verse of God. He is everywhere present, and everywhere active,
governing all creatures and all their actions in a way suited to their
nature, working in, with, through, or without second causes, or
instrumental agency, as seems good in his sight.
Argument from Ephesians i. 17—19.
3. A third argument on this subject is founded on Ephesians i.
17—19. The truth involved in this doctrine was so important in
the eyes of the Apostle Paul, that he earnestly prayed that God
would enable the Ephesians by his Spirit to understand and believe
it. It was a truth which the illumination and teaching of the Holy
Ghost alone could enable them duly to appreciate. Paul prayed
that their eyes might be enlightened not only to know the blessed-
ness of being the subjects of God's vocation, and the glory of the
inheritance in reserve for them, but also " the exceeding greatness
of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of
his mighty power which He wrought in Clirist, when He raised
him from the dead." There are two questions to be decided in
the interpretation of this passage. First, does the Apostle speak
of the present or of the future ? Does he refer to what the be-
liever experiences in this life, or to what he is to experience at the
last day ? In other words, does- the passage refer to the spiritual
resurrection from a state of death in sin, or to the resurrection of
the body and the glory that is to follow ? The great majority of
commentators, Greek as well as Latin, Protestant as well as Cath-
olic, ancient as well as modern, understand the passage to refer to
the conversion or regeneration of believers. This general consent
is primd facie evidence of the correctness of this interpretation.
Besides, the whole context, preceding and subsequent, shows that
such is the meaning of the Apostle. In what precedes, the prayer
refers to the present experience of the believer. Paul prayed that
the Ephesians might be made to know the value of the vocation
they had already received ; the preciousness of the hope they then
enjoyed, and the greatness of the power of which they had ah-ead}'-
been the subjects. Here a reference to the future would be out
of place. Besides, in what follows, the Apostle does not trace the
analogy between the resurrection of Christ and the future resurrec-
696 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
tion of his people. He does not say here as he does in Romans
viii. 11, " He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken
your mortal bodies," but He that raised Christ from the dead, has
quickened you " who were dead in trespasses and sins." It is
clear, therefore, that it is the analogy between the resurrection of
Christ from the grave, and the spiritual resurrection of believers,
that the Apostle has in view. And this is an analogy to which the
Scripture^ elsewhere refer, as in Romans vi. 4. The parallel pas-
sage in Colossians ii. 12, " Buried with him in baptism, wiierein
also ye are risen with him through the faith of the opei'ation of God,
who hath raised him from the dead;" renders it plain that it is the
spiritual resurrection of believers which the Apostle refers to the
mighty power of God, and not the future resurrection of their
bodies.
But if this be, as seems so clear, the meaning of the Apostle,
what does the passage teach ? What is it that Paul desired that
the Ephesians should understand, when he says, that their regen-
eration, or spiritual resurrection was effected by the mighty power
of God ? (1.) In the first place it is very clear that he meant
them to understand that it was not their own work. They had
not by their own power, by the efficiency of their own will, raised
themselves fi'om the dead. (2.) It is no less clear that he does
not mean to teach that there was any special difficulty in the case,
as it regards God. To Him all tilings are easy. He speaks and it
is done. He upholds all things by the word of his power. It is
not the difficulty, but the nature of the work, he would have them
to understand. (3.) And, therefore, the precise truth which the
passage teaches is that regeneration belongs to that class of events
which are brought about by the immediate agency, or almighty
power of God. They are not the effi?ct of natural causes. They
are not due to the power of God acting through second causes.
This is the definite meaning of the words. There can be no rea-
son for saying that the Ephesians had experienced the effects of the
mighty power of God, if they Avere subjects of no other influence
than that of moral suasion, which all more or less experience, and
which all may resist. The language would be incongruous to ex-
press that idea. Besides, the very point of the illustration would
then be lost. The Ephesians had been quickened by the very
power which wrought in Christ when God raised Him from the
dead. This was the immediate power of God. It was not exer-
cised through second causes. It was not a natural process aided
by divine efficiency ; much less was it the result of any form of
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 697
moral suasion. As then Christ was raised by the immediate power
of God, so are the people of God raised from spiritual death by the
same almighty power.
This was in the view of the Apostle a most important truth.
It determines the whole nature of religion. It raises it from the
sphere of the natural, into that of the supernatural. If regenera-
tion is a change effected by the man's own will; if it be due to the
mere force of truth and motives, it is a small affair. Biit if it be
the effect of the mighty power of God, it is as to its nature and
consequences supernatural and divine. The whole nature of Chris-
tianity turns on this point. The conflict of ages concerns the ques-
tion, Whether our religion is natural or supernatural; whether the
regeneration, sanctification, and salvation promised and effected
under the gospel, are natural effects, produced by second causes,
aided and guided, it may be, by the cooperation of God, as He aids
and guides the forces of nature in the production of their wonder-
ful effects ; or whether they are something entirely above nature,
due to the supernatural intervention and constant operation of the
Holy Spirit. Which of these views is Scriptural, can hardly be a
question among unsophisticated Christians. And if the latter be
the true view, it goes far to decide the question. Whether regen-
eration be due to moral suasion, or to the almighty power of the
Spirit.
Argument from the G-eneral Teaching of Scripture.
4. This introduces the fourth argument on this subject. It is
drawn from the general account given in the Scriptures of subject-
ive Christianity, or the nature of the divine life in the soul. It is
the tendency of all anti-Augustinian systems, as just remarked, to
represent all inward religion as a rational affair, that is, something
to be accounted for and explained on rational principles; the result
of moral culture, of the right exercise of our free agency, and the
favourable influence of circumstances. Such is not the view mven
in the Bible. When' our Lord said, "I am the vine, ye are the
branches : he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit : for without me ye can do nothing " (John xv.
5), He certainly meant that the vital union between Him and
his people is something more than that which may subsist between
disciples and their master, — a union including merely trust, con-
geniality, and affection. The influence to which the fruitfulness of
the believer is attributed is something more than the Influence of
the truth wiiich He taught ; however that truth may be applied or
enforced. Their abiding in Him, and He in them, is something
698 PART III. Cu. XIV. — VOCATION.
more than abiding in the profession and belief of the truth. Christ
is the head of the Church not merely as its ruler, but as the source
of its life. It is not I, says the Apostle, that live, " but Christ
liveth in nie." (Gal. ii. 20.) " Know ye not your own selves,
how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates ? " (2
Cor. xiii. 5.) It is from Him, as tlie same Apostle teaches us, that
the whole body derives those supplies by whicli it lives and grows.
(Eph. iv. 16.) " Because I live, ye shall live also." (John xiv.
19.) " I am the resurrection, and the life." (John xi. 25.) " I
am that bread of life." (John vi. 48.) " He that eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him." (John vi.
56.) " This is that bread which came down from heaven : . . . .
he that eateth of this bread shall live forever." (John vi. 58.)
"We shall be saved by his life." (Rom. v. 10.) " The first man
Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quicken-
ing spirit." (1 Cor. xv. 45.) " As the Father hath life in him-
self, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." (John
Y. 26.) "Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." (John xvii.
2.) " Your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is
our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."
(Col. iii. 3, 4.)
The Scriptures, therefore, plainly teach that there is a vital union
between Christ and his people ; that they have a common life
analogous to that which exists between the vine and its branches,
and between the head and members of the body. The believer is
truly partaker of the life of Christ. This great truth is presented
under another aspect. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are one God. Wherever, therefore, the Father is, there is the Son,
and where the Son is, there is the Spirit. Hence if Christ dwells
in the believer, the Father does and the Spirit also does. In answer
to the question of the disciples, " Lord, how is it that thou wilt
manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world ? " our Lord an-
swered, " If a man love me, he will keep my words : and my Father
will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with
him." (John xiv. 22, 23.) In the Bible, therefore, it is said that
God dwells in his people ; that Christ dwells in them, and that the
Spirit dwells in them. Tliese foi-ms of expression are intei'changed,
as they all mean the same thing. Thus in Romans viii. 9—11, "Ye
are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. Now if any man have not tlie Spirit of Christ
he is none of his." Here the same person is called the Spirit of
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 699
God and the Spirit of Christ. But in the next verse it is said,
" If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin ; " and tlien
in verse 11, " But if the Spirit of liini that raised up Jesus from the
dead dwell in yon, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spiiit that dwelleth in you."
It is thus plain that the indwelling of the Spirit is the indwelling
of Christ. And tlierefore those numerous passages in whicli the
Spirit of God is said to dwell in his people, are so many proofs of
the mystical union between Christ and all true believers. They
are one. One with Him and one with one another. For by one
Spirit they are all baptized into one body. (1 Cor. xii. 13.)
These representations of Scripture concerning the union be-
tween Christ and his people, are neither to be explained nor ex-
plained away. Both attempts have often been made. Numerous
theories have been adopted and urged as divine truth, which in
fact are only philosophical speculations. Some say that it is "the
substance of Christ's person " that dwells in the believer. Others
say that it is his divine nature, the Logos, who becomes incarnate
in the Church ; others that it is the humanity of Christ, his soul
and body ; others that it is the theanthropic nature ; others that it is
generic humanity raised by its union with the divine nature to the
power of divinity. All this is darkening counsel by words without
wisdom. It is, however, far better than the opposite extreme,
which explains everything away. The one metliod admits the vital
fact, however unauthorized may be the explanations given of it.
The other denies the fact, and substitutes something easily intel-
ligible for the great Scriptural mystery. It is enough for us to
know that Christ and his people are really one. They are as truly
one as the head and members of the same body, and for the same
reason ; they are pervaded and animated by the same Spirit. It
is not merely a union of sentiment, of feeling, and of interests.
These are only the consequences of the vital union on which the
Scriptures lay so nmch stress.
Now if the whole nature of religion, of the life of God in the
soul, is, according to the Scriptures, thus something supernatural
and divine ; something mysterious ; something which is not to be
explained by the ordinary laws of mental action or moral cultui'e ;
then assuredly regeneration, or the commencement of this divine
life in the soul, is no simple process, the rationale of which can be
made intelligible to a child. It is no unassisted act of the man
himself yielding to the force of truth and motives ; nor is it an act
to which he is determined by the persuasion of the Spirit, giving
700 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
truth its clue influence on the mind. It is an event of a different
kind. It is not thus natural but supernatural ; not referrible to
any second cause, but to the mighty power of God. This does not
involve any undervaluing of the truth, nor any oversight of the
constant mediate influence of the Spirit on the minds of all men,
and especially upon the minds of the people of God. We may
admit the value and absolute necessity of light, while we deny
that light can open the eyes of the blind, or preserve the restored
organ in its normal vigour. The man who contends for the possi-
bility and truth of miracles, does not make everything miraculous.
He may admit both the potentia ordinata of God, and his constant
providential control over second causes, while he holds that there
are occasions in which He acts immediately by his power, without
the intervention of any other agency. So Augustinians, while
they hold to the supernatural character of the inward life of the
believer, and to the fact that regeneration is due to the immediate
exercise of the almighty power of God, nevertheless believe that
the Holy Spirit constantly operates on the minds of men, accord-
ing to the laws of mind, enlightening, convincing, persuading, and
admonishing. They believe all that their opponents believe, but
they believe more.
Argument from the Nature of Regeneration.
5. The Scriptures not only teach that regeneration is the work
of the immediate omnipotent agency of the Spirit, but they give
such an account of its nature as admits of no other explanation of
its cause. It is a kind of work which nothing but almighty power
can accomplish. It is a CwoTrot-^ffts, a making alive. Originating
life is from its nature an act of God, for He alone can give life. It
is also an act of immediate power. It precludes the intervention
of second causes as much as creation does, Christ was raised from
the dead by the power of God. So was Lazarus. So are the re-
generated. Spiritual resurrection is just as really and as literally
an act of making alive as calling a dead body to life. The one oc-
curs in the sphere of the outward, the other in the sphere of the
spiritual world. But the one is just as real a communication of
life as the other. When the principle of life is communicated to
a dead body, all the chemical properties which belong to it are con-
trolled by the vital force, so as to make them work for its preser-
vation and increase, instead of for its disintegration. And when
the principle of spiritual life is imparted to the soul, it controls all
its mental and moral energies, so that they work to its spiritual
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 701
nourishment and growth in grace. The Scriptures, therefore, in
teaching that regeneration is a quickening, do thereby reveal to us
its nature as a work not of man, or of moral suasion, or of divine
efficiency operating through second causes, but of the immediate,
and therefore the ahnighty power of God.
The Bible teaches the same truth when it declares believers to
be new creatures, and says that they are created anew in Christ
Jesus. Creation is the work of God, and it is an immediate work.
It precludes the intervention of means. It is of necessity the
work of almighty power, and therefore the Scriptures so often
claim it as the peculiar prerogative of God. It is true that the
Greek and Hebrew words which we translate by the English
word create, are often used in the sense of to make, to fashion out
of preexistent materials. They occur, also, in a secondary or fig-
urative sense, and express in such cases only the idea of a greats
and generally a favourable change, no matter how produced. It
would not, therefore, be sufficient to establish the Augustinian doc-
trine of regeneration, that it is called a creation, if in other parts
of Scripture it were spoken of as a change produced by second
causes, and if the means and the mode were deJscribed. In that
case it would be natural to take the word in a figurative sense.
But the contrary of all this is true. If the Bible taught the eter-
nity of matter, or that the world is an emanation from God, or a
mode of God's existence, we should be forced to give a figurative
sense to the words, " In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth." But as the Scriptures tell us that God alone is eter-
nal, and that all else owes its existence to his will, we are author-
ized and bound to retain these words in their simple and sublime
significance. Now, as regeneration is always declared to be God's
work, his peculiar work, and a work of his mighty power, analo-
gous to that whicli He wrouglit in Christ, when He i\aised Him
from the dead ; as it is declared to be a making alive, an opening
of the eyes, and an unstopping the ears ; then, wJien it is also
called a new creation, we are bound to understand that term as
containing a new assertion that it is a work of almighty power.
Another common Scriptural representation leads to the same
conclusion. Believers are the children of God, not merelv as his
rational creatures, but as the subjects of a new birth. They are
born of God. They are born of the Spirit. They are beo-otten
of God. 1 John v. 1-18. The essential idea in such representa-
tions, is that of communication of life. We derive one form of
life from our corrupt -earthly parents, and another from the Spirit.
702 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
" Tliat which is bom of the flesh, is flesh ; and that which is born
of the Spirit, is Spirit." (John iii. 6.) In the case of creatures,
this communication of life by the parent to the offspring is merely
transmission. In the case of God, the fountain of all life, it is a
real communication. He originates the life which He gives. As
it is utterly incongruous to think of a creature's begetting itself,
or originating its own life ; and no less incongruous to regard this
commencement of life or being, as brought about by secondary in-
fluences, so is it utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures to regard
regeneration as a man's own work, or as due to his cooperation, or
as produced by the influences of truth. As well might it be assumed
that light, heat, and moisture could make a dead seed germinate,
and bring forth fruit. All beginning of life is directly from God ;
and this is what the Bible most explicitly asserts to be true of re-
generation. Those who become the children of God are " born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God." (John i. 13.)
This argument is not invalidated by the fact that Paul says to
the Corinthians, " I have begotten you through the gospel." All
words are used literally and figuratively ; and no man is misled
(or need be) by this change of meaning. We are accustomed to
speak of one man as the spiritual father of another man, without
any fear of being misunderstood. When the historian tells us
that the monk Augustine converted the Britons, or the American
missionaries the Sandwich Islanders, we are in no danger of mis-
taking his meaning ; any more than when it is said that Moses di-
vided the Red Sea, or brought water out of the rock, or gave the
people manna out of heaven. The same Paul who told the Cor-
inthians that he had *' begotten them through the gospel," told
them in another place, " I have planted, Apollos watered : but
God gave the increase. So then, neither is he that planteth any-
thing, neither he that watereth ; but God that giveth the increase."
(1 Cor. iii. 6, 7.)
In 1 Peter i. 23, it is written, " Being born again, not of corrup-
tible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever." From this passage it is sometimes inferred
that the new birth is a change produced not by the immediate
agency of God, but instrumentally by the Word, and therefore by
a rational process, or moral suasion. It has, however, been already
remarked that regeneration is often taken in the wide sense of con-
version. That is, for the whole change which takes place in the
sinner when he is made a child of God. This is a comprehensive
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 703
change, including all that takes place in the consciousness, and all
that occurs in the soul itself (so to speak), below the conscious-
ness, and subsequently in the state and relation of the soul to God.
In this change the Word of God is eminently instrumental. It is by
the Word that the sinner is convinced, aroused, made to seek rec-
onciliation with God, and enlightened in the way of salvation. It
is by the Word that the person and work of Clirist are i-evealed,
and all the objects on which the activity of the regenerated soul
terminates, are presented to the mind. The Gospel is, therefore,
the wisdom and power of God unto salvation. It is by the Word
that all the graces of the Spirit are called into exercise, and with-
out it holiness, in all its conscious manifestations, would be as im-
possible as vision without light. But this does not prove that light
produces the faculty of seeing ; neither does truth produce the
principle of spiritual life. The Apostle Paul, who glories so much
in the gospel, who declares that it is by the foolishness of preach-
ing that God saves those that believe, still teaches that the inward
work of the Spirit is necessary to enable men to receive the things
freely given to them of God ; that the natural man receives not
the things of the Spirit, that they must be spiritually discerned.
(1 Cor. ii. 8—11.) As examples of the latitude with which the
words beget, begotten, and new-birth are used in Scripture, refer-
ence need be made only to such passages as 1 Peter i. 3, where it is
said. He " hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resur-
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead ; " and 1 Corinthians iv. 15.
There is therefore nothing in what the Scriptures teach of the
agency of the truth in conversion, or regeneration in the wide
sense of the word, inconsistent with their distinct assertion that in
its narrow sense of quickening or imparting spiritual life, it is an
act of the immediate omnipotence of God. This point was ad-
verted to in a previous chapter.
The fact then that the Bible represents regeneration as a spii'it-
ual resurrection, as a new creation, and as a new birth, proves it to
be the work of God's immediate agency. There is another familiar
mode of speaking on this subject which leads to the same conclusion.
In Deuteronomy xxx, 6, Moses says: "The Lord thy God will
circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou may-
est live." In Ezekiel xi. 19, it is said, " I will give them one
heart, and I will put a new spirit within you ; and I will take
the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of
flesh." And in cluipter \xxvi. 26, " A new heart also will I give
704 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take
away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart
of flesh. And I will put iny Spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do
them." Jeremiah xxiv. 7, " I will give them an heart to know
me." The Psalmist prayed, " Create in me a clean heart, O
God ; and renew a right spirit within me." (Ps. li. 10.) It is
admitted that the word heart, like all other familiar terms, is used
in different senses in the Scriptures. It often means the whole
soul ; as when mention is made of the eyes, the thoughts, and the
intentions of the heart. It very frequently means the feelings or
affections, or is used collectively for them all, or for the seat of the
feelings. A cold, hard, sluggish, timid, humble, broken, heart are
all common forms of expression for what exists in the conscious-
ness ; for transient and changeable states of the mind, or inward
man. Notwithstanding it is no less clear that the word is often
used in the same sense in which we use the word nature, for a
principle of action, a permanent habit or disposition. Something
that exists not in the consciousness, but <below it. That such is
its meaning in the passages just quoted, and in all others in which
God is said to change or renew the heart, is plain : (1.) Because
it is something which God not only gives, but which He creates.
(2.) Because it is the source of all right action. It cannot be a
volition, or a generic purpose, or any state of mind which the man
himself produces ; because it is said to be the source of love, of
fear, and of new obedience. Our Lord's illustration, derived from
trees good and bad, forbids any other interpretation. A good tree
produces good fruit. The goodness of the tree precedes and deter-
mines the goodness of the fruit ; and so a good heart precedes all
just thoughts, all right purposes, all good feelings and all holy exer-
cises of every kind. (3.) The Scriptures explain what is meant by
" creating a new heart " by the exegetical expression, "I will put
my Spirit within you." This surely is not a right purpose. The in-
dwelling Spirit or Christ dwelling in us, is the principle and source
of that new life of which the believer is made the subject. All
those passages in which God promises to give a new heart, are proofs
that regeneration is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit ; not a
moral suasion, but a ci'eating and imparting a principle of a new
form of life.
Argument from related Doctrines.
6. Another decisive argument in favour of the Aujrustinian doc-
trine of efficacious grace, is derived from its necessary connection
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 705
with other Scriptural doctrines. If the latter be true, the former
must be true also. If the Bible teaches that men since the Fall
have not lost all ability to what is spiritually good ; that they are
not dead in trespasses and sins ; that they still have the power to
turn themselves unto God, or, at least, tlie power to yield to the
influence which God exerts for their conversion, and power to
resist and refuse, then so far as this point is concerned it miglit be
true that regeneration is the result of moral suasion. It might
be true that " God oiFers the same necessary conditions of accept-
ance to all men ; desires from the heart that all men as free agents
comply with them and live ; brings no positive influence upon any
mind against compliance, but, on the contrary, brings all those
kinds and all that degree of influence in favour of it, upon each
individual, which a system of measures best arranged for the suc-
cess of grace in a world of rebellion allows ; and finally, saves,
without respect of kindred, rank, or country, whether Scythian,
Greek or Jew, all who under this influence, accept the terms and
work out their own salvation, and reprobates alike all who re-
fuse." ^ But, on the other hand, if the Scriptures teach that
" man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of
will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation ; so as a natural
man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is
not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare
himself thereunto ; " ^ then must it also be true that " when God
converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace. He
freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace
alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually
good." ^ Then is it also true, that man in effectual calling " is
altogether passive, until, being quickened and renewed by the
Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to
embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it."* If man is as
really spiritually dead, in his natural state since the fall, as Lazarus
was corporeally dead, then is the spiritual resurrection of the one as
really a work of divine omnipotence as the bodily resurrection of the
other. These doctrines, therefore, thus logically connected, have
never in fact been dissociated. All who hold that original sin
involves spiritual death and consequent utter inability to any
spiritual good, do also hold that his recovery from that state is not
effected by any process of moral suasion human or divine, but by
1 The Quarterly Christian Spectator, of New Haven, vol. iii. 1831, p. 635.
2 Westminster Confession, cli. ix. § 3.
8 Jbid. ix. § 4. 4 Ibid. X. § 2.
VOL. II. 46
706 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
the immediate exercise of God's almighty power. It is in refer-
ence to both classes of the dead that our Lord said, "As the Fa-
ther raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them ; even so the Son
quickeneth whom he will. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God : and they that hear shall live." (John v. 21,
25.)
There is the same intimate connection between the doctrines of
God's sovereignty in election and efficacious grace. If it were
true that men make themselves to differ; that election is founded
on the foresight of good works ; that some who hear the Gospel
and feel the influence of the Spirit, allow themselves to be per-
suaded, that others refuse, and that the former ai'e therefore chosen
and the latter rejected, then it vi'ould be consistent to represent
the grace exercised in the vocation of men as an influence to be
submitted to or rejected. But if God has mercy on whom He will
have mercy ; if it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that run-
neth, but of God that showeth mercy ; if it be of God, and not
of ourselves, that we are in Christ Jesus ; if God hides these
things from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes as
seems good in his sight ; then the influence by which He carries
his purpose into effect must be efficacious from its own nature, and
not owe its success to the determination of its subjects.
The same conclusion follows from what the Scri})tures teach of
the covenant of redemption. If in that covenant God gave to
the Son his people as the reward of his obedience and death, then
all those thus given to Him must come unto Him ; and the influence
which secures their coming must be certainly efficacious. Thus
this doctrine is implicated with all the other great doctrines of
grace. It is an essential, or, at least, an inseparable element of
that system which God has revealed for the salvation of men ;
a system the grand design of which is the manifestation of the
riches of divine grace, i. e., of his unmerited, mysterious love to
the unworthy ; and which, therefore, is so devised and so adminis-
tered that he that -glories must glory in the Lord ; he must be con-
strained to say, and rejoice in saying, " Not unto us, O Loed ; not
unto us, but unto thy name give glory." (Ps. cxv. 1.)
Argument from Experience.
7. Appeal on this subject may safely be made to the experience
of the individual believer, and to the history of the Church. All
the phenomena of the Christian life are in accordance with the
§5.] PROOF OF DOCTRINE OF EFFICACIOUS GRACE. 707
f
Auffustinian doctrine of efficacious gi'ace. No believer ever as-
cribes his regeneration to himself. He does not recognize him-
self as the author of the work, or his own relative goodness, his
greater susceptibility to good impression, or his greater readiness
of persuasion, as the reason why he rather than others, is the sub-
ject of this change. He knows that it is a work of God ; and
that it is a work of God's free grace. His heart responds to the
language of the Apostle when he says : " Not by works of right-
eousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he
saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the
Holy Ghost." (Tit. iii. 5.) Paul says of himself that God, hav-
ing separated him from his mother's womb called him by his grace.
(Gal. i. 15.) There was nothing in him, M'ho was injurious and
a persecutor, to demand the special intervention of God in his
behalf. So far from his referring his vocation to himself, to his
greater readiness to yield to the influence of the truth, he con-
stantly represents himself as a monument of the wonderful conde-
scension and grace of God. He would have little patience to lis-
ten to the philosophical account of conversion, which makes the
fact so intelligible why one believes and another rejects the offer
of the Gospel. Paul's conversion is the type of every genuine con-
version from that day to this. The miraculous circumstances
attendino; it were simply adventitious. He was not converted by
the audible words or by the blinding light, which encountered him
on his way to Damascus. Our Lord said, " If they hear not
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though
one rose from the dead." (Luke xvi. 31.) Neither was the
change effected by a process of reasoning or persuasion. It was
by the instantaneous opening his eyes to see the glory of God
in the person of Jesus Christ. And this, opening his eyes was as
obviously an act of unmerited favour and of God's almighty power,
as was the restoration of the blind Bartimeus to sight. God, says
the Apostle, revealed his Son in Him. The revelation was in-
ternal and spiritual. What was true in his own experience, he
tells us, is no less true in the experience of other believers. " The
god of this world," he says, " hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not." But " God, who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Chi'ist."
(2 Cor. iv. 4, 6.) The truth concerning the person and work of
Christ is presented objectively to all. The reason why some see
it, and others do not, the Apostle refers to the simple fiat of Him
708 PART ni. ch. XIV. — vocation.
who said in the beginning, " Let there be h'ght." This is Paul's
theory of conversion.
Five thousand persons were converted on the day of Pente-
cost. Most of them had seen the person and works of Christ.
They had heard his instructions. They had hitherto resisted all
the influences flowing from the exhibition of his character and the
truth of his doctrines. They had remained obdurate and unbe-
lieving under all the strivings of the Spirit who never fails to
enforce truth on the reason and the conscience. Their conversion
was sudden, apparently instantaneous. It was radical, affecting
their whole character and determining their whole subsequent life.
That this was not a natural change, effected by the influence of
trutli on the mind, or produced by a process of moral suasion, is
primd facie certain from the whole narrative and from the nature
of tlie case. The Holy Ghost was poured out abundantly, as the
Apostle tells, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel. Three classes
of effects immediately followed. First, miracles ; that is, external
manifestations of the immediate power of God. Secondly, the im-
mediate illumination of the minds of the Apostles, by which they
were raised from the darkness, prejudices, ignorance, and mistakes
of their Jewish state, into the clear comprehension of the Gospel
in all its spirituality and catholicity.* Thirdly, the instantaneous
conversion of five thousand of those who with wicked hands had
crucified the Lord of glory, into his broken-hearted, adoring, de-
voted worshippers and servants. This third class of effects is as
directly referred to the Spirit as either of the o'thers. They all
belong to the same general category. They were all supernatural,
that is, produced by the immediate agency or volition of the
Spirit of God. The Rationalist admits that they are all of the
same general class. But lie explains them all as natural effects,
discarding all supernatural intervention. He has the advantage,
so far as consistency is concerned, over those who admit the gift
of tongues and the illumination of the Apostles to be the effects
of the immediate agency of the Spirit, but insist on explaining the
conversions as the consequents of argument and persuasion. This
explanation is not only inconsistent with the narrative, but with the
Scriptural method of accounting for these wonderful effects. The
Bible says they are produced by " the exceeding greatness of "
the power of God ; that He raises those spiritually dead to a new
life ; that He creates a new heart in them ; that He takes from them
the heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh ; tliat He opens
their eyes, and commands light to shine into their hearts, as in the
§6.] • OBJECTIONS. 709
beginning He commanded light to shine in the darkness which
brooded over chaos. The Bible, therefore, refers conversion, or
regeneration, to the class of events due to the immediate exercise
of the power of God.
The scenes of the day of Pentecost do not stand alone in the
history of the Church. Similar manifestations of the power of
the Spirit have occurred, and are still occurring, in every part of
the world. They all bear as unmistakably the impress of divine
agency, as the miracles of the apostolic age did. We are justi-
fied, therefore, in saying that all the phenomena of Christian ex-
perience in the individual believer and in the Church collectively,
bear out the Augustinian doctrine of Efficacious Grace, and are
inconsistent with every other doctrine on the subject.
§ 6. Objections.
There are no specific objections against the doctrine of effica-
cious grace which need to b^ considered. Those which are com-
monly urged are pressed with equal force against other allied doc-
trines, and have already come under review. Thus, —
1. It is urged that this doctrine destroys human responsibility.
If Ave need a change which nothing but almighty power can effect
before we can do anything spiritually good, we cease to be respon-
sible. This is the old objection that inability and responsibility are
incompatible. This difficulty has been presented thousands of times
in the history of the Church, and has been a thousand times an-
swered. It assumes unwarrantably that an inability which arises
from character, and constitutes character, is incompatible with char-
acter.
2. It is objected that if nothing but the creative power of God
can enable us to repent and believe, we must patiently wait until
that power is exerted. It is thus doubtless that those reason who
are in love with sin and do not really desire to be delivered from
it. Some leper, when Christ was upon earth, might have been so
unreasonable as to argue that because he could not heal himself,
he must wait until Christ came to heal him. The natural effect
however, of a conviction of utter helplessness is to impel to earnest
application to the source whence alone'help can come. And to all
who feel their sinfulness and their inability to deliver themselves,
there is the promise, " Come unto me ... . and I will give you
rest." " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you." It will be time enouo-h
for any man to complain Avhen he fails to experience Christ's heal-
710 PART ni. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
ing power, after having sought it as long, as earnestly, and as
submissively to the directions of God's Word as its importance
demands ; or, even with the assiduity and zeal with which men
seek the perishing things of this life.
3. It is objected that a doctrine which supposes the intervention
of the immediate agency of the Great First Cause in the develop-
ment of history, or regular series of events, is contrary to all true
philosophy, and inconsistent with the relation of God to the world.
This is a point, however, as to which philosopliy and tlie Bible,
and not the Bible only, but also natural religion, are at variance.
The Scriptures teach the doctrines of creation, of a particular prov-
idence, of supernatural revelation, of inspiration, of the incarnation,
of miracles, and of a future resurrection, all of which are founded
on the assumption of tlie supernatural and immediate agency of
God. If the Scriptures be true, the philosophy which denies the
possibility of such immediate intervention, must be false. There
every Christian is willing to leave the question.
§ 7. History of the Doctrine of Grace.
The doctrines of sin and gi*ace are so intimately related, that the
one cannot be stated without involving a statement of the other.
Hence the views of different parties in the Church in reference to
the work of the Spirit in the salvation of men, have already been
incidentally presented in the chapter on Sin. With regard to the
period antecedent to the Pelagian controversy, it may be sufficient
to remark, (1.) As there was no general discussion of these sub-
jects, there were no defined parties whose opinions were clearly
announced and generally known. (2.) It is therefore, not the
creeds adopted by the Church, but the opinions of individual writ-
ers, to which reference can be made as characteristic of this pe-
riod. (3.) That the statements of a few ecclesiastical writers are
very insufficient data on which to found a judgment as to the faith
of the people. The convictions of believers are not determined by
the writings of theologians, but by the Scriptures, the services of
the Church, and the inward teaching of the Spirit, that is, by the
unction from the Holy One of which the Apostle speaks, 1 John ii.
20. (4.) There is abundant evidence that the Church then, as
always, held that all men since the fall are in a state of sin and
condemnation ; that this universality of sin had its historical and
causal origin in the voluntary apostasy of Adam ; that deliverance
from this state of sin and misery can be obtained only through
Christ, and by the aid of his Spirit ; and that even infants as soon
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 711
as born need regeneration and redemption. The practice of infant
baptism was a constant profession of faith in the doctrines of origi-
nal sin and of regeneration by the immediate agency of the Holy
Spirit. (5.) It is no doubt true that many declarations may be
cited from the early writers, especially of the Greek Church, in-
consistent with one or more of the doctrines just stated ; but it is
no less true that these same writers and others of equal authority
explicitly avow them. (6.) As the prevalent heresies of that time
tended to fatalism, the natural counter tendency of the Church
was to the undue exaltation of the liberty and ability of the human
will. (7.) That this tendency was specially characteristic of the
Greek Church, and has continued to distinguish the theology of
that Church to the present day.
Pelagian Doctrine.
The Pelagian doctrine has already repeatedly been presented.
It is onl}'- in reference to the views of Pelagius and his followers on
the subject of grace that anything need now be said. As the
Pelagians insisted so strenuously upon the plenary ability of man
to avoid all sin, and to fulfil all duty, it was obvious to object that
they ignored the necessity of divine grace of which the Scriptures
so frequently and so plainly speak. This objection, however, Pela-
gius resented as an injury. He insisted that he fully recognized
the necessity of divine grace for everything good, and magnified
its office oil every occasion. ^ In a letter to Innocent he assures the
Roman bishop that while praising the nature of man, we always
add the help of the grace of God ; " ut Dei semper gratis addamus
auxilium."^ By grace, however, he meant, (1.) Free will, the
ability to do right under all circumstances. This inalienable en-
dowment of our nature he regarded as a great distinction or gift of
God. (2.) The law, and especially the revelation of God in the
Gospel, and the example of Christ. He says God rouses men from
the pursuit of earthly things, by his promises of future blessedness,
etc.^ (3.) The forgiveness of sin. The Pelagian heresy " asserts
that ' the grace of God Includes our being so created that we have
power to avoid sin, that God has given us the help of the law and
of his commands, and further that he pardons those who havino-
sinned return tinto him.' * In these things alone is the grace of
1 See his letter to Innocent, a. d. 417, quoted by Augustine, De Gratia Chinsti [xxxi-
XXXV.], 33-38; Works, edit. Benedictines, Paris, 1838, vol. x. pp. 549-5.52.
2 Augustine, De Gratia Christi [xxxvii.], 40; p. 553, a.
8 Jbid. [x.],ll; pp. 535, 536.
* Augustine, de Gestis Pelagii; Works, vol. x. p. 518, b.
712 PART m. Ch. XIV.— VOCATION.
God recognized." (4.) Both Pelagius and Julian speak of the
operation of the Spirit on the minds of men as a form of divine
grace. In commenting on the words, " Ye are .... the epistle
of Christ " (2 Cor. iii. 3), Pelagius says, " To all it is manifest
that through our doctrine ye have believed on Christ, 'confirmante
virtutem Spiritu Sancto.' " This influence of the Spirit, however,
he regarded as didactic, or enlightening the mind ; while he denied
the absolute necessity of such spiritual influence, and taught that
it only rendered obedience more easy.^
We have already seen that Augustine, holding as he did that
man since the fall is in a state of spiritual death, utterly disabled
and opposite to all good, taught that his restoration to spiritual life
was an act of God's almighty power; and being an act of omnipo-
tence was instantaneous, immediate, and irresistible. This point is
sufficiently well known and already established.
Semi-Pelagianism.
The doctrine of Pelagius had been condemned in the provincial
Synod of Carthage, a. d. 412 ; in the Council of Jerusalem, 413 ;
and in the Third General Council at Ephesus, 431. The opposite
doctrine of Augustine was declared to be Scriptural and the doc-
trine of the Church. It was one of the inevitable consequences
of Augustine's doctrine of efficacious grace, that God is sovereign
in election and reprobation. If the sinner cannot convert himself,
nor prepare himself for that work, nor cooperate in effecting it,
then it can neither be out of regard to such preparation or coopera-
tion, nor because of the foresight thereof that God makes one, and
not another the subject of his saving grace. This Augustine freely
admitted, and taught, in accordance with tlie plain teachings of the
Scriptures, that God has mercy on whom He will have mercy. It
was this inevitable consequence of the doctrine rather than the
doctrine itself, whether of total depravity and helplessness, or of
irresistible grace, that led to the strenuous opposition which con-
tinued to be made to the Augustinian system notwithstanding the
decision of councils in its favour. So prominent was the doctrine
of predestination in these controversies, and so strong was the
antipathy to that doctrine, that the Augustinians were called by
their opponents Prcedestinati. To avoid the drea*ded conclusion
that fallen men lie at the mercy of God, and that He has mercy
on whom He will have mercy, the Semi-Pelagians denied that the
grace of God was irresistible. If not irresistible, then it depends
1 Wiggers, p. 183. See Wiggers' Augusliiiisn and Pelayianism, cli. xiii., Andover, 1840,
pp. 177-218.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 713
on the sinner whether it be yielded to or rejected. But this yield-
ing to the grace of God, is something right and good, and some-
thing leading to salvation. Fallen men therefore are not utterly
disabled to all good. And if not thus powerless for spiritual good,
they are not spiritually dead. Original sin consequently, is not so
dreadful an evil as Augustine represented it. Men are weak and
sick ; but not helpless and dead. The Semi-Pelagians, as the
designation implies, therefore, endeavoured to hold a middle ground
between Augustine and Pelagius. They held, (1.) That in con-
sequence of the fall of Adam, and our connection with him, all
men are born in a state of sin and condemnation. (2.) That in
consequence of this inherent, hereditary corruption, all the powers
of man are weakened, so that he is of himself unable to resist sin
and turn himself unto God. (3.) But while divine grace or aid is
thus necessary to conversion, men may begin the work. They
may seek after God, strive to walk in his ways, and comply with
all the demands of the gospel. (4.) Those who thus begin the
work of conversion, God assists in their endeavours by his grace ;
and if the sinner makes due improvement of this divine assistance,
the work of conversion is effected. (5.) As it rests with those
who hear the gospel to receive or to reject it, it cannot be admitted
that any definite portion of the human race was given to Christ as
his inheritance whose salvation is rendered certain by that gift, and
by the efficacious grace of God securing their conversion and their
perseverance in faith. As the conversion of the sinner depends
upon himself, so does his perseverance. The truly regenerated,
therefore, may fall away and be lost.
On some of these points the original leaders of the Semi-Pela-
gian party differed among themselves, but this is a correct exhibi-
tion of the system as known in history as a form of doctrine. The
characteristic principle of the Semi-Pelagian theory, by which it is
distinguished from the doctrine afterwards adopted in the Romish
Chui'ch, and by the Remonstrants and others, is that the sinner be-
gins the work of conversion. The Semi-Pelagians denied " pre-
venting grace." God helps those only who begin to help them-
selves. He is found only of those who seek Him.
The historical details of the rise of Semi-Pelajjianism are mven
above in the section on Original Sin. The most obscure point in
the system is the meaning to be attached to the word " grace." It
was used, as before remarked, in a sense so wide as to include all
divine help, whether afforded extei'nally in the revelation of the
truth, the institutions of the Church, or the circumstances of life.
714 PART m. ch. XIV. — vocation.
or by the providential efficiency of God as exerted in cooperation
with all second causes, or by the special influence of the Holy
Spirit. This last came to be the accepted meaning of the word
grace. According to Augustinians, tliis influence of the Spirit
was mediate, or through the truth, in all those exercises which, in
the case of adults, usually precede the work of regeneration, such
as conviction, remorse, anxiety, desire for deliverance from the
curse of the law, etc. ; and also in the constant activity of the soul
after regeneration in the exercise of all the gifts of the Spirit. It
is, however, immediate, creative, and almighty in the work of re-
generation. A blind man might be deeply sensible of the misery
of his sightless state, and earnestly desire that his eyes should be
opened. He might be informed that Jesus of Nazareth restored
sight to the blind. Arguments might be used to awaken confi-
dence in the power and willingness of Jesus to grant that blessing
to him. Under these mediate influences he might frequent the
place where Jesus was to be found, and seek his aid. If the Lord
spake the word, his eyes were instantly opened. Then all the
glories of the heavens and the wonders of the earth broke on his
view. The state of that man's mind was very complex. It was
the result of many cooperating causes. But the restoration of
sight itself, was the simple, mediate, instantaneous effort of almighty
power. This was precisely what the Semi-Pelagians denied as in
relation to regeneration. They saw that if that was admitted,
they must admit the sovereignty of God in election and all the
other features of the Augustinian system. They, therefore, insisted
not only that the preliminary work was from the man himself, and
not due to the Spirit's drawing one man and not another, but that
in eveiy state of the process, the Spirit's influence was mediate,
i. e., a moral suasion through the truth, which could be, and in
multitudes of cases actually is, effectually resisted. These are the
doctrines condemned in the Councils of Orange and Valence, A. D.
529. The decrees of those Councils being ratified by the Bishop
of Rome, Augustinianism was reestablished as the authoritative
form of doctrine for the Latin Church.
Scholastic Period.
All conceivable forms of doctrine concerning sin and grace were
ventilated successively by the subtle intellects of the schoolmen of
the Middle Ages. Some of the theologians of that period were
really pantheistic in their philosi^phy ; others, while recognizinir ^i
personal God, merge all tlie efficiency of second cnu-^cs in his om-
§ 7.] • HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 715
nipresent agency ; others went to the opposite extreme of making
the human will independent of God, and maintained that men can
act contrary to all kinds and degrees of influence not destructive
of their nature, which may be brought to bear upon them. These
sided naturally with Pelagius. Plenary ability, the power to do
whatever is obligatory, they said, is essential to free agency. Men
may, therefore, abstain from all sin. When pinners they may turn
themselves unto God. If God condescends to aid them in this
work, either by external revelations or by inward influence, they
must have the power to yield or to refuse. The alternative rests
with themselves. Others again come nearer to the Semi-Pelagian
theory, admitting that man cannot save himself; cannot turn unto
God ; cannot repent or believe without divine aid. But this aid
they held was given to all in sufficient measure to enable every man
to become and to continue a true penitent and believer. Many
of the most distino-uished theologians of the Latin Church, how-
ever, during this period adhered more or less closely to the doc-
trines of Augustine. This was the case with Leo and Gregory the
Great, in the fifth and sixth centuries, and Bede and Alcuin in the
eighth and ninth. When, however, Gottschalk avowed the Augus-
tinian doctrine, not only of original sin and grace, but also of pre-
destination, it gave rise to violent opposition and issued in his con-
demnation in the Council of Chiersy, 849, under the influence of
Hincmar ; but in the opposing Council of Valence, 855 A. D., the
doctrines of election and grace in the Augustinian sense were
maintained.
Anselm in the eleventh century was essentially Augustinian in
his views of sin and grace. He held that man is born in a state
of sin, with a will enslaved to evil, free only in sinning. From
this state of helplessness, he can be freed only by the grace of
the Holy Spirit, not by his own power, and not by an influence
which owes its success to the cooperation of an enslaved will.^
The two great contending powers in the Latin Church for two
centuries before the Council of Trent, were the Dominicans and
Franciscans, the Thomists and Scotists, the former the followers
of Thomas Aquinas, and the latter of Duns Scotus. As Aquinas
adopted very nearly the doctrine of Augustine concerning original
sin, so he approached more nearly to Augustinianism in his views
concerning grace and predestination than the majority of the
1 See J. A. Hasse's Anselm von Canterbury ; Parts I. and II., the second part containing
an exposition of his doctrines. See also Dr. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii.
ch. 5.
716 PART UI. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
schoolmen. He held that man since the fall had lost all ability
to anything spiritually good ; that, without grace, he could do
nothing acceptable to God or which secured salvation. But he
held, —
1. That a gratia preveniens^ a divine influence which precedes
any good effort on the part of the sinner is granted to men, by
which they are excited, encouraged, and aided. If this influence
be improved, it secures the merit of congruity, " Quia coiigruum
est, ut dum homo bene utitur sua virtute, Deus secundum super-
excellentem virtutem excellentius operetur." ^ This divine influ-
ence is called " gratia prima," and " gratia gratis data."
2. To this preventing grace when improved, is added the " gra-
tia gratum faciens," renewing grace, called also "gratia operans ; '*
and, in reference to its effects, " gratia habitualis," by which is
meant, " infusio gratiae."
3. To this succeeds the constant " gratia cooperans." *' Gratia,"
he says, " dupliciter potest intelligi. Uno modo divinum auxilium
quo nos movet ad bene volendum et agendum. Alio modo habit-
uale donum." Again, " Gratia dividitur in operantem et cooper-
antem, secundum diversos effectus, ita etiam in praevenientem et
subsequentem, qualitercunque gratia accipiatnr. Sunt autem
quinque effectus gratije in nobis, quorum primus est, ut anima sane-
tur: secundus, ut bonum velit ; tertius est, ut bonum quod vult,
efficaciter operetur : quartus est, ut in bono perseveret : quintus
est, ut ad gloriam perveniat." ^
Duns Scotus, in his philosophy and theology, was indeed devoted
to the Church, but antagonistic to the views of her most distin-
guished teachers. This antagonism was most pronounced against
Thomas Aquinas, whose opinions he took every opportunity of op-
posing. Scotus endeavoured, as far as possible, to obliterate the
distinction between the supernatural and the natural. Admitting
the operations of divine grace, and their necessity, he endeavoured
to reduce them to the category of the natural or established agency
of God in cooperation with second causes. He held the doctrine
of " absolute power," according to which ev^erything, the moral
law, the method of salvation, everything but absolute contradic-
tions, are subject to the arbitrary will of God. God can, as Scotus
taught, make right wrong and wrong right, love a crime and malice
a virtue. Nothing has any value or merit in itself. It depends
simply on the good pleasure of God, what it avails. There is no
1 Summa, ii. i. qu. cxiv. 6, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 219 a, of second set.
2 /bid. qu. cxi. 2, 3, pp. 210 b, 211 a.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 717
merit, much less infinite merit in the work of Christ. God might
have made anytiiing else, even the most insignificant, the ground
of our salvation. The requisition of faith and repentance in order
to salvation is alike arbitrary. It depends solely on the absolute
will of God that holiness, the supernatural work of the Spirit, has
higher value than morality, which is the product of the unassisted
free-will of man. Sin is wholly voluntary. Hereditary depravity
is not truly sin ; it is simply the want of the supernatural right-
eousness which Adam lost for himself and for all his posterity.
The will remains free. Man can sin or avoid all sin. Neverthe-
less, God determines to accept only the fruits of grace, with which
the will cooperates. It was principally the doctrine of Duns Sco-
tus concerning original sin, and its universality, and especially in
reference to the Virgin Mary, which was the subject of constant
conflict between the Dominicans and Franciscans in the Latin
Church.i
The Tridentine Doctrine.
The Council of Trent had a very difficult task to perform in
framing a statement of the doctrines of sin and grace which, while
it condemned the Protestant doctrine, should not obviously infringe
against either the acknowledged doctrines of the Latin Church, or
the cherished views of one or other of the conflicting parties
within its pale. This, indeed, was not merely a difficult, but an
impossible task. It was impossible to condemn the Protestant
doctrine on these subjects without condemning the doctrine of Au-
gustine, which the Church had already sanctioned. The Council
availed itself of generalities as far as possible, and strove so to
frame its canons as to secure the assent of the greatest number.
On the subject of grace it, (1.) Expressly condemned the Pelagian
doctrine of free-will or plenary ability. " Si quis dixerit hom-
inem suis operibus, quae vel per humanae naturae vires, vel per
legis doctrinam fiant, absque divina per Jesum Christum gratia
posse justificari (become holy) coram Deo ; anathema sit." " Si
quis dixerit, ad hoc solum gratiam per Jesum Christum dari, ut fa-
cilius homo justi vivere, ac vitam aeternam promereri possit ; quasi
per liberum arbitrium sine gratia utrumque, sed asgre tamen, et
difficiliter possit ; anathema sit." (2.) It condemned with equal
distinctness the Semi-Pelagian doctrine that man begins the work
of conversion: "Si quis dixerit, sine praevenienti Spiritus Sancti
inspiratione, atque ejus adjutorio, hominem- credere, sperare, dili-
1 On the philosophical and theological position of Duns Scotus, see Hitter's Geschichta
der Clirisdichen Phitosopkie, Hamburg, 1845, vol. iv. pp. 354-472.
718 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
gere aut poenitere posse, sicut oportet, ut ei justificationis (recren-
eration) gratia conferatur ; anathema sit." (3.) Against the Re-
formers and Augustine the Council decided, " Si quis dixerit, lib-
erum hominis arbitrium a Deo motum, et excitatum nihil cooperari
assentiendo Deo excitanti, atque vocanti, quo ad obtinendam justifi-
cationis gratiam se disponat, ac prteparet ; neque posse dissentire
si veht ; sed velut inanime quoddam nihil omnino agere, mereque
passive se habere ; anathema sit." " Si quis liberum hominis
arbitrium [by which is meant, potestas ad utramque parteni\ post
Adas peccatum amissum, et extinctum esse dixerit ; aut rem esse
de solo titulo, immo titulum sine re, figmentum denique a Satana
invectum in ecclesiam : anathema sit." ^
There is of course confusion and misapprehension in all these
statements. The Protestants did not deny that men cooperate in
their own conversion, taking that word in the sense in which the
Romanists used the term (and the still broader term Justification,
as including the whole work of turnino; unto God. No one denies
that the man in the synagogue cooperated in stretching out his
withered arm or that the impotent one at the pool was active in
obeying the command of Christ, " Arise, take up thy bed, and go
unto thine house." But the question is, Did they cooperate in
the communication of vital power to their impotent limbs ? So
Protestants do not deny that the soul is active in conversion, that
the " arbitrium a Deo motum " fi'eely assents ; but they do deny
that the sinner is active and cooperating in the production of the
new life in the exercise of which the sinner turns to God. Moeh-
ler, the ablest and most plausible of the modern defenders of Ro-
manism, uses the word " new-birth " as including the life-long
process of sanctification, in which the soul is abundantly coopera-
tive. He recognizes, however, tiie radical difference between the
Tridentine doctrine and that of the Protestants. He insists that in
the whole work, in regeneration in its limited sense, as well as in
conversion, the soul cooperates with the Spirit, and that it depends
on this cooperation, whether the sinner receives the new life or
not. The power of the Spirit in all its inward operations may be
resisted or assented to as the free-will of the subjects of his influ-
ence may decide. " According to Catholic principles," as before
quoted, he says, "there are two agencies combined in the work
of the new birth, the human and the divine, so that it is a divine-
human work. The divine influence goes first, exciting, awaken-
ing and vivifying, without any agency of the man in meriting,
1 Sess. VI. can. i.-v. ; Streitwolf, Libri SynihoUci, pp. 33, 34.
§7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 719
invoking, or procuring it ; but the subject must allow himself to be
aroused and must freely follow. God offers his help to deliver
fi'om the fall, but the sinner must consent to be helped and em-
brace the offered aid ; if he accepts, he is taken by the divine
Spirit, and gradually, although in this life never perfectly, restored
to the heights from which he fell. The Spirit of God does not
work by necessitating, although he is actively urgent ; his omnipo-
tence sets itself a limit in human liberty, which it does not over-
step ; for such violation of free agency would be the destruction
of the moral order of the world which eternal wisdom has founded
on liberty." He therefore justifies the Papal condemnation of the
Jansenist doctrine : " Quando Deus vult animam salvam facere,
et earn tangit interiori gratias su£e manu, nulla voluntas humana ei
resistit. — Dei gratia nihil aliud est, quam ejus omnipotens volun-
tas." 1 On the following page,^ he says, " The Catholic doctrine
that there are in fallen men moral and religious powers which do
not always sin, and which must in the new birth be called into
exercise, gave rise to the idea, that this activity of what is natural
in man, was a transition into grace, that is, that the right use of
what is natural conditions or secures grace. This would indeed
be Pelagian, and the man, not Christ, would merit grace, and
grace cease to be grace The delicate and refined sense of
the Catholic doctrine, which carefully distinguishes between nature
and grace, avoids that difficulty. The finite, even when sinless,
may stretch itself to the utmost, it never reaches the Infinite, so
as to seize and appropriate it. Nature may honestly unfold all its
powers, it never can by and out of itself be sublimated into the
Supernatural ; the human can by no exertion of power make itself
divine. There is an impassable gulf between the two, if grace
does not interpose. The divine must come down to the human, if
the human is to become divine." This is philosophy. The ques-
tion is not, whether the finite can attain the Infinite, or the human
become divine. Nor is the question between Romanists and
Protestants, Whether fallen men can become holy without the
supernatural grace of the Holy Spirit. But the question is,
Whether the regeneration of the soul is due to the nature of the
Spirit's influence, and to the purpose of God, or to the consent
and cooperation of the subject of that influence.
1 Symbolik, 6th edit., Mainz, 1843, ch. in. § ii. pp. 105, 10&
2 Pages 113, lU.
720 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
The Synergistic Controversy.
The Lutherans from the beginning held the doctrine of original
sin in its most extreme form. In the Augsburg Confession, in the
Apology for that Confession, in the Smalcald Articles, and finally,
in the Form of Concord, that doctrine is stated in stronger terms
than in any other Christian Symbol. If men are since the fall in
a state of condemnation, if the hereditary corruption derived from
Adam is not only truly sin, but the deepest and greatest of all
sins ; if the soul is not merely morally sick and enfeebled, but
spiritually dead, as taught in those Symbols, then it follows : (1.)
That man since the fall has no ability to anything spiritually good.
(2.) That in order to his return to God he needs the life-giving
power of the Spirit of God. (3.) That the sinner can in no way
prepare himself to be the subject of this grace, he cannot merit it,
nor can he cooperate with it. Regeneration is exclusively the
work of the Spirit, in which man is the subject and not the agent.
(4.) That, therefore, it depends on God, and not on man, who are,
and who are not, to be made partakers of eternal life. (5.) That
consequently God acts as a sovereign, according to his good pleas-
ure, and according to the counsel of his own will, in saving some
and in passing by others, who are left to the just i-ecompense of
their sins. All these inferences are, as Augustinians believe, drawn
in Scripture, and were freely accepted by Luther and, at first, by
the Lutheran Church. Before the death of the Reformer, and
more openly after that event, many of the Lutheran theolo-
gians adopted the later views of Melancthon, who taught, " Con-
currunt tres causae bonae actionis, verbum Dei, Spiritus Sanctus, et
humana voluntas assentiens nee repugnans verbo Dei. Posset
enim excutere, ut excutit Saul sua sponte." ^ He defined free-
will as " facultas applicandi se, ad gratiam."'^ In these views,
which of necessity involved a modification of the doctrine of orig-
inal sin, Melancthon was followed by a large class of Lutheran
theologians, especially those of Wittemberg. The theologians of
Jena, with one prominent exception, Strigel, adhered to the old
Lutheran doctrine. Besides this discussion about sin and grace,
there were several other subjects which greatly agitated the Lu-
theran Church. The doctrine concerning the person of Christ,
the nature of justification, the necessity of good works, toleration
of Papal ceremonies (the adiaphora), and the Lord's Supper,
were debated with so much zeal that the Protestant rulers were
1 Loci Com. p. 90. ^ Page 92.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 721
constrained to interfere. Under their auspices, Andreas and
Chemnitz, assisted by other theologians, drew up what is known as
the " Form of Concord," in which with great clearness and skill
they reviewed all the matters in dispute, and endeavoured to
adopt a mode of statement which should secure general assent. In
this they were not disappointed. The Form of Concord was so
generally adopted that it received full symbolical authority, and
has ever since been regarded as the standard of orthodoxy among
the Lutherans.^
As to original sin, and the consequent utter inability of man to
any spiritual good, the doctrine of Luther was retained in its integ-
rity. Luther had said in his book, " De Servo Arbitrio," ^ " Ad-
monitos velim liberi arbitrii tutores, ut sciant, sese esse abnegatores
Christi dum asserunt liberum arbitrium. Nam si meo studio gra-
tiam Dei obtineo, quid opus est Christi gratia pro mea gratia
accipienda ? " " Humiliari penitus non potest homo, donee sciat,
prorsus extra suas vires, studia, voluntatem, opera, omnino ex
alterlus arbitrio, consilio, voluntate, opere suam pendere salutem,
nempe Dei solius." ^ On this point the " Form of Concord "
says, inter alia, " Credimus, quantum abest, ut corpus mortuum
seipsum vivificare atque sibi ipsi corporalem vitam restituere pos-
sit, tantum abesse, ut homo, qui ratione peccati spiritualiter mor-
tuus est, seipsum in vitam spiritualem revocandi ullam facultatem
habeat." ^ Of course, if such be the state of the natural man,
there can be no cooperation on the part of the sinner in the work
of regeneration. This Symbol, therefore, says, " Antequam homo
per Spiritum Sanctum illuminatur, convertitur, regeneratur et tra-
hitur, ex sese et propriis naturalibus suis viribus in rebus spiritual-
ibus et ad conversionem aut regenerationem suam, nihil inchoare
operari, aut cooperari potest, nee plus, quam lapis, truncus, aut li-
mus." ^ Again, " Quamvis renati etiam in hac vita eousque pro-
grediantur, ut bonnm velint eoque delectentur, et bene agere
atque in pietate proficere studeant : tamen hoc ipsum non a nos-
tra voluntate aut a viribus nostris proficiscitur, sed Spiritus Sanctus
operatur in nobis illud velle et perficere." ^
If original sin involves spiritual death, and spiritual death im-
1 The Form of Concord consists of two parts; the first is called the Epitome and contains
a brief statement of the several articles of faith and of the opposing errors; and the second
is the Solvla Dectarnlio or more extended exhibition and vindication of the doctrines taught.
The Epitome itself occupies tifty pages in Hase's edition of the Libri SymboUci of the Lu-
theran Church.
2 HW/ts,edit. Wittenberg (Latin), 1546, vol. ii. p. 522. 3 ibid. p. 467, b.
4 Epitome, ir. 3; Hase, Libri SymboUci, 3d edit. Leipzig, 1836, p. 579.
5 n. 24; Hase, p. 662. 6 „. 39; jbid. p. 666.
VOL. II. 46
722 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
plies utter inability to spiritual good, and to all cooperation in the
work of regeneration, it follows that regeneration is exclusively
the work of the Spirit, in which the subject is entirely passive.
This, also, the " Form of Concord " admits. " Item, quod D.
Lutherus scripsit, hominis voluntatem in conversione pure passive
se habere : id recte et dextere est accipiendum, videlicet respectu
divinae gratiae in accendendis novis motibus, hoc est, de eo intelligi
oportet, quando Spiritus Dei per verbum auditum, aut per usum
sacramentorum hominis voluntatem aggreditur, et conversionem
atque regenerationem in homine operatur. Postquam enim Spiri-
tus Sanctus hoc ipsum jam operatus est atque effecit, hominisque
voluntatem sola sua divina virtute et operatione immutavit atque
renovavit : tunc revera hominis nova ilia voluntas instrumentum
est et organon Dei Spiritus Sancti, ut ea non modo gratiam ap-
prehendat, varum etiam in operibus sequentibus Spiritui Sancto
cooperetur." ^
But if the reason why any man is regenerated is not that he
yields of his own will to the grace of God, or that he cooperates
with it, but. simply that God gives him a new heart, then it
would seem to follow that God saves some and not others of the
fallen race of men, of his own good pleasure. In other words, it
follows that election to eternal life is not founded in anything in us,
but solely in the will or purpose of God. This conclusion the
" Form of Concord " admits, so far as the saved are concerned. It
teaches (1) That predestination has reference only to the saved.
That God predestinates no one either to sin or to eternal death.
(2.) That the election of some persons to salvation is not for any-
thing good in them, but solely of the mercy or grace of God.
(3.) That predestination to life is the cause of salvation. That is,
it is because God from eternity purposed to save certain individu-
als of the human family, that they are saved. (4.) That this
predestination or election renders the salvation of the elect cer-
tain. Should they for a time fall away, their election secures their
restoration to a state of grace. The following passages contain
the avowal of these several principles. " Praedestinatio, seu
aeterna Dei electio, tantum ad bonos et dilectos filios Dei pertinet ;
et haec est causa ipsorum salutis. Etenim eorum salutem procurat,
et ea, quae ad ipsam pertinent, disponit. Super banc Dei praedes-
tinationem salus nostra ita fundata est, ut inferorum portae earn
evertere nequeant." ^ " Hac pia doctrina et declaratione articuli
1 Epitome ii. 18; Ibid. pp. 582, 583.
3 Formula Cmicurdim, Epitome, xi. 5 ; Hase, p. 618.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 723
de aeterna et salvifica electorum filiorum Dei praedestinatione Deo
gloria sua omnis solide tribuitur, quod videlicet mera et gratuita
misericordia in Christo (absque omnibus nostris meritis aut bonis
operibus) salvos nos faciat, secundum voluntatis suae propositum.
Eph. i. 5 sq Falsum igitur est et cum verbo Dei pugnat,
cum docetur, quod non sola Dei misericordia, et unicum sanctissi-
mum Christi meritum, verum etiam aliquid in nobis causa sit elec-
tionis divinsB, propter quod nos Deus ad vitam aeternam prasdesti-
naverit. Non enim tantum antequam aliquid boni faceremus,
verum etiam priusquam nasceremur, imo ante jacta fundamenta
mundi elegit nos Deus in Christo. Ut secundum electionem pro-
positum Dei maneret, non ex operibus, sed ex vocante, dictum est
ei : Major serviet minori. Rom. 9, [11.] " ^
As to the perseverance of the saints, it is said, " Cum etiam
electio nostra ad vitam aeternam non virtutibus aut justitia nostra,
sed solo Christi raerito, et benigna coelestis Patris voluntate nita-
tur, qui seipsum negare non potest (cum in voluntate et essentia
sua sit immutabilis), earn ob causam, quando fihi ipsius obedien-
tiam non praestant, sed in peccata labuntur, per verbum eos ad
poenitentiam revocat, et Spiritus Sanctus per verbum vult in iis effi-
cax esse, ut in viam redeant, et vitam emendent." ^ The older
Lutheran theologians adhered to this doctrine. Hutter ^ asks,
" Siccine ergo electi non possunt excidere gratia Dei ? Immo
vero possunt ; sed ita, \it per veram poenitentiam et fidem sese
rursus virtute Spiritus Sancti ad Deum convertant et ad vitam re-
deant. Nisi enim redirent, non essent in numero electorum."
But if all men since the fall are in a state of spiritual death, ut-
terly unable to do anything to secure the grace of God, or to give
that grace, when offered, a saving effect ; if election is not a mere
general purpose to save those who believe, but a purpose to save
particular individuals ; if that purpose is of God's mere good pleas-
ure, and not founded upon anything actual or foreseen in its ob-
jects ; if, moreover, it is the cause of salvation, and renders the
salvation of its objects certain ; then it would seem inevitably to
follow, that although the judicial reason why the non-elect fail of
salvation is their own sin, yet the reason why they, and not oth-
ers equally guilty are left to suffer the penalty of their sins, is to
be found in the sovereignty of God. " Even so. Father ; for so it
seemed good in thy sight." This, however, the Lutherans of
that day could not admit ; and therefore, with what Guoricke calls
1 XI. Ixxxvii., Ixxxviii., Hase, p. 821. 2 xi. Ixxv; Ibid. p. 817.
8 ComjJtndium Theol. loc. 1.3, qu. 30.
724 PART III. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
" gottlich nothwendiger Verstandes-Inconsequenz " ^ (a divinely
necessitated logical inconsistency), they rejected that consequence
of their avowed principles. In this illogical position the theologi-
ans of the Lutheran Church could not remain, and therefore, since
Gerhard (who died a. d. 1637), they have adopted the more con-
sistent scheme which has already been exhibited. According to that
scheme, God sincerely not only desires, but purposes the salvation
of all men ; He makes abundant provision for the salvation of all ;
sends grace and truth to all, which grace and truth become cer-
tainly efficacious, unless resisted. Those whom God foresees will
not resist. He elects to eternal life ; those whom He foresees will
resist unto the end, He foreordains to eternal death.
Reformed Church.
The experience of the Reformed Church conformed to that of
the Lutheran, in so far as that the same defection from the original
confessional doctrines occurred in both. As the followers of Me-
lancthon adopted the theory of synergism, or of the cooperation of
the sinner in his own regeneration, on which cooperation his fate de-
pended, substantially the same view was adopted by the Remon-
strants or Arminians within the pale of the Reformed Church.
The departure of the Remonstrants from the principles of the
Reformation, as to original sin, grace, ability, the satisfaction of
Christ, justification and faith, was far more serious than that which
occurred among the Lutherans. Another marked difference be-
tween the two cases is, that the synergistic controversy resulted in
a modification of the Lutheran scheme of doctrine which became
general and permanent ; whereas the Remonstrants or Arminians
formed a distinct ecclesiastical organization outside of the Reformed
churches which adhered to the Reformed faith. The peculiar doc-
trines of the Remonstrants, both as to sin and as to grace, were
stated above ; ^ and also those of the Evangelical or Wesleyan Armin-
ians.^ The decision of the Synod of Dort, condemnatory of the Ar-
minian doctrines, was unanimous. That Synod included delegates
from all the Reformed churches except that of France, whose del-
egates were prevented from attending by an order from the King.
The established churches of England and Scotland, as well as
those of Holland, Germany, and Switzerland were represented.
The judgment of the Synod was therefore the judgment of the
Reformed Church. In accordance with the acknowledged Sym-
1 Kirckengeschichte, Per. vii. B. cap. ii. § 203, 6th edit. Leipzig, 1846, vol. iii. p. 419.
a Pages 327, 328. 8 Pages 329, 330.
§7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 725
bols of that Church, the Synod decided, (1.) That " all mankind
sinned in Adam and became exposed to the curse and eternal
death. That God would have done no injustice to any one, if He
had determined to leave the whole human race under sin and the
curse." ^ (2.) " That God out of the human race, fallen by their
fault into sin and destruction, according to the most free good
pleasure of his own will, and of mere grace, chose a certain num-
ber of men, neither better nor worthier than others, .... to
salvation in Christ." 2 (3.) That this decree to elect "a certain
number" to eternal life, involves of necessity and according to the
teaching of Scripture, a purpose to pass by, and leave those not
elected to suffer the just punishment of their sins.^ (4.) That
God out of infinite and unmerited love sent his Son " efficacious-
ly to redeem " all those " who were from eternity chosen unto
salvation and given to Him by the Father." * (5.) That Christ
makes satisfaction for us, being " made sin and a curse upon the
cross for us, or in our stead," and that " this death of the Son of
God is a single and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sins,
of infinite value and price abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins
of the whole world." ^ " The promise of the Gospel is, that who-
soever believeth in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have
eternal life. "Which promise ought to be announced and proposed,
promiscuously and indiscriminately, to all nations and men to
whom God, in his good pleasure, hath sent the Gospel, with the
command to repent and believe." ^ " But because many who are
called by the Gospel do not repent, nor believe in Christ, but per-
ish in unbelief; this doth not arise from defect or insufficiency of
the sacrifice offered by Christ upon the cross, but from their own
fault." '' This general invitation or call is perfectly sincere on the
part of God ; " for sincerely and most truly God shows in his
Word what is pleasing to Him ; namely, that they who are called
should come to Him. And He sincerely promises to all who
come to Him, and believe, the peace of their souls and eternal
life." ^ That some do come and are converted, " is not to be as-
cribed to man, as if he distinguished himself by free-will from
others furnished with equal or sufficient grace for faith and conver-
sion (which the proud heresy of Pelagius states) but to God, who,
as He chose his own people in Christ from eternity, so He effec-
tually calls them in time."^ " This regeneration is declared in the
1 Chapter i. art. 1. 2 Chapter i. art. 7. 8 Chapter i. art. 15.
* Chapter ii. art. 8. 5 Chapter ii. art. 3. 6 Chapter ii. art. 5.
7 Chapter ii. art. 6. s Chapter iii. art. 9. 9 Chapter iii. art. 10.
726 PART in. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
Scriptures to be a new creation, a resurrection from the dead, a
giving of life which God without us (that is, without our concur-
rence) worketh in us. And this is Jbj no means effected by the
doctrine alone sounding without, by moral suasion, or by such a
mode of operation, that after the operation of God (as far as He
is concerned) it should remain in the power of man, to be regen-
erated or not regenerated, converted or not converted ; but it is
manifestly an operation supernatural, at the same time most pow-
erful, most sweet, wonderful, secret, ineffable in its power, accord-
ing to Scripture (which is inspired by the author of this operation)
not less than, or inferior to, creation, or the resurrection of the
dead." ^ " This grace God owes to no man." He who receives
it must render everlasting thanks ; he who does not receive it,
either cares not for spiritual things, and rests satisfied with himself,
or, secure, he vainly boasts that he has that which he has not.^
" This divine grace of regeneration does not act upon men like
stocks and trees, or take away the properties of his will, or vio-
lently compel it while unwilling ; but it spiritually quickens (vivi-
fies), heals, corrects, and sweetly, and at the same time powerfully
inclines it." ^ " Those whom God, according to his purpose, calleth
to fellowship of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and regenerates by
his Holy Spirit, He indeed sets free from the dominion and slavery
of sin, but not entirely in this life from the flesh and the body of
sin."* Because of these remains of sin, believers, if" left to them-
selves, would fall away, " but God is faithful, who confirms them in
the grace once mercifully conferred upon them, and powerfully
preserves them in the same even unto the end." ^
Hypothetical Universalism.
A class of theologians in the Reformed Church who did not
agree with the Remonstrants against whom the decisions of the
Synod of Dort, sustained by all branches of the Reformed body,
were directed, were still unable to side with the great mass of their
brethren. The most distinguished of these theologians were Amy-
raut, La Place, and Cappellus. Their views have already been
briefly stated in the sections treating of mediate imputation ; and of
the order of decrees and of the design of redemption. These de-
partures from the accepted doctrines of the Reformed Church pro-
duced protracted agitation, not in France only but also in Holland
1 Chapter iii. art. 12. 2 Chapter iii. art. 15.
8 Chapter iii. art. 6. 4 Chapter v. art. 1.
6 Chapter v. art. 3. See Niemeyer, CoUeclio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, pp. 69-3-716.
§ 7,] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 727
and Switzerland. The professors of the University of Leyden,
Andreas Rivet and Frederick Spanheim, were especially prominent
among the opposers of the innovations of the French theologians.
The clergy of Geneva drew up a protest in the form of a Conseu"
sus of the Helvetic Churches which received symbolical author-
ity. The doctrines against which this protest was directed are,
(1.) That God, out of general benevolence towards men, and not
out of special love to his chosen people, determined to redeem all
mankind, provided they should repent and believe on the appointed
Redeemer. Hence the theory was called hypothetical universal-
ism. (2.) That the death or work of Christ had no special refer-
ence to his own people ; it rendered the salvation of no man cer-
tain, but the salvation of all men possible. (3.) As the call of
the gospel is directed to all men, all have the power to repent and
believe. (4.) God foreseeing that none, if left to themselves,
would repent, determines of his own good pleasure to give saving
grace to some and not to others. This is the principal distinguish-
ing feature between the theory of these French theologians and of
the Semi-Pelagians and Remonstrants. The former admit the
sovereignty of God in election ; the latter do not.
This system necessitates a thorough change in the related doc-
trines of the gospel. If fallen men have power to repent and be-
lieve, then original sin (subjectively considered) does not involve
absolute spiritual death. If this be so, then mankind are not sub-
ject to the death threatened to Adam. Tlierefore, there is no
immediate imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity. As they
derive a polluted nature from him, which is the ground of the dis-
pleasure of God, they may so far be said to share in his sin. This
is mediate imputation. Again, if the death of Christ does not
render certain the salvation of his people, then it was not vicarious
in the proper sense of that word ; nor did He die as a substitute.
His satisfaction assumes of necessity the character of a general
display, a didactic exhibition of truth. At least this is the logical
tendency, and the actual historical consequence of the theory.
Moreover, if Christ did not act as the substitute and representative
of his people, there is no ground for the imputation of his right-
eousness to them. The French theologians, therefore, denied that
his active obedience is tlius imputed to believers. The merit of
his death may be said to be thus imputed as it is the ground of the
forgiveness of sin. This of course destroys the idea of justification
by merging it into an executive act of pardon. Moreover, the
principles on which this theory is founded, require that as every
728 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
other provision of the gospel is general and universal, so also the
call must be. But as it is undeniable that neither the written
word nor the preached gospel has extended to all men, it must be
assumed that the revelation of God made in his works, in his prov-
idence, and in the constitution of man, is adequate to lead men to
all the knowledge necessary to salvation ; or, that the supernatural
teaching and guidance of the Spirit securing such knowledge must
be granted to all men. It is too obviously inconsistent and unrea-
sonable to demand that redemption must be universal, and ability
universal as the common heritage of man, and yet admit that the
knowledge of that redemption and of what sinners are required to
do in the exercise of their ability, is confined to comparatively few.
The " Formula Consensus Helvetica," therefore, includes in its pro-
test the doctrine of those " qui vocationem ad salutem non sola
Evangelii praedicatione, sed naturae etiam ac Providentije operibus,
citra ullum exterius prseconium expediri sentiunt," etc.^ It is not
wonderful, therefore, that this diluted form of Augustinianism
should be distasteful to the great body of the Reformed Churches.
It was rejected universally except in France, where, after repeated
acts of censure, it came to be tolerated.
Supernaturalism and Rationalism.
The departure from the doctrines of the church standards of the
Protestant churches began early, with the decline of vital godli-
ness. The only stable foundation for truth is either the external
authority of the Church tolerating no dissent, or the inward testi-
mony of the Spirit, the unction of the Holy One which both
teaches and convinces. The former from its nature can secure
only apparent conformity or the assent of indifference. Living
faith can come only from a life-giving source.
The first great change was effected by the introduction of the
Wolf-Leibnitzian method into theology. Wolf assumed that all
the truths of religion, even its highest mysteries, were truths of the
reason, and capable of being demonstrated to the reason. This
was a complete revolution. It changed the foundation of faith
from the testimony of God in his Word and by his Spirit, to the
testimony of our own feeble, insignificant reason. No wonder that
a building resting on such a foundation, first tottered, and then
fell. If the demonstration of the doctrine of the Trinity from the
truths of the reason failed to convince, the doctrine was rejected.
So of all the other great doctrines of revelation, and so especially
1 XX. : Niemeyer, Colhctio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, p. 737.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 729
of the Scriptural doctrines of sin and grace. A class of Rational-
ists was therefore soon formed ; some rejecting everything super-
natural, all prophecy, immediate revelation, inspiration, mu'acles,
and divine influence other than what was mediate and providential ;
and others, while admitting a supernatural revelation supernaturally
authenticated, still maintained that the truths of such revelation
were only those of natural religion, all others being explained away
or rejected as accommodations to the modes of thinking and speak-
ing in past ages. This change was of course gradual. The Ra-
tionalists proper soon came to deny any supernatural influence of
the Spirit of God in the conversion of men. Being Theists, and
admitting that God exercises a providential efficiency, not only in
the external world, but also in the support and guidance of free
agents, — an efficiency which is natural, as operating in accordance
with natural laws, they referred all that the Scriptures teach and all
that the Church teaches of the operations of grace, to the general
head of providence. God does no more and no less in the conver-
sion of men than He does in their education, and in furthering
their success in life, or in causing the rain to fall and the grass to
grow. In denying the Scriptural account of the fall of man, the
Rationalists rejected the foundation on which the whole Scriptural
scheme of redemption rested.
The Supernaturalists, although united against the Rationalists,
differed very much among themselves. Some stood on the divid-
ing line, admitting supernatural intervention on the part of God, in
re'^elation and in grace, not because asserted in the Scriptures, but
because consistent with reason, and because probable and desirable.
Thus Bretschneider says in reference to grace, " Reason finds the
immediate operation of God on the souls of men for their illumina-
tion and improvement, not only possible, but probable. As God
stands in connection with the external world, and in virtue of his
infinitely perfect life constantly operates therein ; so must He also
stand in connection with the moral world, or there could be no
moral government. But as his working in the natural world ap-
pears as natural, so that we never apprehend his supernatural effi-
ciency ; thus his operation in the moral world is also natural con-
formed to psychological laws, so that we are never conscious of his
operation." ^ This divine influence, therefore, he says, is simply
"moral." "It can consist onl}'^ in this, that God, through the
ideas which the truth awakens in the soul, rouses it to decide for
the good." 2
1 rinndbuch der Dogmatik, § 185, 3d edit. Leipzig, 1828, vol. ii. p. 600.
2 Ibid. p. 604.
730 PART m. Ch. XIV. — vocation.
Moras 1 makes the reformation of men the work of God in so far
that God sustains " nostrum in usu doctrinae studium," so that it is
successful. He attributes to man the abihty to devote himself to
this study, and censures those who undertake to determine, " quid
et quantum Deus atque homo faciant, ubi aut quando Deus aut
homo incipiat, seu desinat, Deus solus agat, seu homo aliquid con-
ferat."
J. L. Z. Junkheim^ taught that the work of God in conversion
is supernatural, not because He acts immediately, but because the
means through which He works, his Word as a divine revelation,
and the effect are supernatural. The modus agendi is purely nat-
ural, and the reformation only so far exceeds the natural power of
man, as that the truth by which it is effected was not discovered
by man, but revealed by God ; and so far as this revealed truth
has more power than the thoughts or speculations of men.
Michaehs ^ and Doderlein * took the same ground, and denied
any supernatural influence in the work of conversion. Others
taught that the grace of God is universal, and that by grace is to
be understood natural knowledge, and the helps to virtue, of which
men have the opportunity and power to avail themselves. Eber-
hard,^ Henke, Eckermann, and Wegscheider ^ acknowledge only
a general agency of God in conversion, in that He has written the
moral law on the hearts of men, given them the power of self-ref-
ormation, and is the author of Christianity, and in his providence
gives them the occasion and inducements to virtuous action. Am-
mon '^ says grace consists in " procuratione institutionis salutaris,
excitatione per exempla virtutis illustria, paupertate, calamitatibus,
admonitionibus amicorum et inimicorum," etc.^ There was a class
of theologians during this period to which Storr, Flatt, and Knapp
belonged, who opposed these open denials of the principles, not only
of Protestant, but also of Catholic Christianity, but who were
nevertheless far below the standard of the Reformation.
To this state of extreme attenuation was the theology of the
Reformers reduced, when the introduction of the speculative, tran-
scendental, or pantheistic philosophy effected an entire revolution,
which even such writers as Dorner are accustomed to call " the
1 Epitome, p. 229.
2 Von detn Utbernatiirlichen in den Gnadenunrkungen, Erlangen, 1775.
3 £)t,gm. p. 180.
< Imtttlutio Theologi Christiani, edit. Nuremberg and Altorf, 1797, vol. II. p. 698.
5 Apol. (les Siikrat, 2 Thl. p. .387.
6 Jnstiltiliones Theohgia, 5th edit. Halle, 1826, § 152. '' Stmmn, § 132.
8 See Bretschneider, vol. ii. p. 615, 616. Dorner's Geschichte der protesiantischen Tkeolo-
gie.
§ 7.] HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 731
regeneration of theology." The leading principle of this philoso-
phy, in all its phases, is Monism, the denial of all real dualism be-
tween God and man. If man is only the modus existendi of God,
then of course there is an end of all questions about sin and grace.
Sin can only be imperfect development, and man's activity being
only a form of the agency of God, there is no place for what the
Church means by grace. All resolves itself into the Hegelian
dictum, " What God does I do, and what I do God does." " Der
menschliche Wille eine Wirkungsform des gottlichen Willens
.... ist."i
The change introduced by the new philosophy was pervading.
Even those who did not adopt it in its anti-christian or anti-theistic
results, had all their modes of thought and expression modified
by its influence. The views thus induced, of the nature of God,
of his relation to the world, of the nature or constitution of man,
of the person of Christ, and of the method of redemption, were so
diverse from those previously adopted, that the new theology,
whether designated as mystic or speculative, has few points of con-
tact with the systems previously adopted. Its whole nomenclature
is changed, so that the productions of the writers of this class can-
not be understood without some previous training. Of course it
is out of the question to class these theologians, who differ greatly
among themselves, under the old categories. To say that they
were Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian, Tridentine, Lutheran, Reformed,
or Arminian, would be absurd. Schleiermacher, Ullmann, Nitzsch,
Twesten, Martensen, Lange, Liebner, Dorner, Schoeberlein, De-
litzsch, and many others, are believers in the divine origin of Chris-
tianity ; and are able, learned, and zealous in the support of the
truth as they apprehend it ; and yet, in their theological discus-
sions, their whole mode of thinking, and their method of present-
ing the doctrines of Scripture, are so controlled by their philosophy,
that to a great degree, and to a degree much greater in some cases
than in others, their writings have the aspect of philosophical dis-
quisitions, and not of exhibitions of Scriptural doctrines.^ With
these writers as a class, all questions concerning grace, are merged
into the more comprehensive questions of the nature of God, his
1 See Hase's Dogmalik, § 177, 3d edit. Leipzig, 1842, p. 305.
2 It is characteristic of these writers, however, that some of their productions are simple
and Biblical, while others are in the hij^hest degree mj'stical and obscure. Lange's Ccnn-
menlaries, for example, are for the most part intelligible enough, but his Philosopkische
Dogmatik none but a German, native or naturalized, can understand. It would be difficult
to name a book more replete with sound Scriptural doctrine, clearly stated, than Delitzsch'a
Commenlar zum Brief e an die Hebi-der, with its archeological and doctrinal Excursus on sac-
rifices and the atonement, and yet at other times he writes likes a Cabalist.
732 PART m. Ch. XIV.— vocation.
relation to the world, the person of Christ, and the way in which
his life becomes the life of his people. In many cases, indeed, the
person, and the special work of the Spirit, are altogether ignored.
We are redeemed because the divine and human are united in
Christ, and we derive from Him, through the Church and the sac-
raments, the power of this divine-human life.
All the topics connected with the great doctrines of sin and
grace have been frequently and earnestly debated by the theolog-
ical writers of our own country. But into these debates no new
questions have entered. The principles involved in these contro-
versies are the same as those involved in the earlier conflicts in the
Church. Even the system of Dr. Emmons, which has most ap-
pearance of originality, is the doctrine of a continued creation
pushed to its legitimate consequences, combined with certain incon-
gruous elements derived from other sources. With Dr. Emmons
God is the only cause ; second causes (so called), whether material
or mental, have no efficiency. God creates everything at every
moment ; all volitions or mental states, as well as all things exter-
nal. He denied all substance out of God; identity consists in a
sameness and continuity of phenomena or effects connected by
the will or constitution of God. The moral and religious convic-
tions of this distinguished man were too stroncr to allow him to
draw the legitimate conclusions from his theory of divine efficiency.
He therefore maintained that men's volitions are free, although
created by God ; and that they are morally good or evil, determin-
ing character and involving responsibility, although they are the
acts of God, or the product of his creative power. This is very
different from the Church doctrine of original or concreated right-
eousness, and of infused grace. The Bible does indeed teach that
God created man in his own image in knowledge, righteousness,
and true holiness. But this holiness was a permanent state of
mind ; the character of a person, a suppositum^ or individual sub-
sistence ; and not the character of an act which is good or bad ac-
cording to the motives by which it is determined. If God creates
holy acts, He is a Holy Being, but the acts have no moral charac-
ter apart from their efficient cause or author. Faith and repent-
ance are due to the power of God, they are his gifts ; but they are
truly our acts, and not God's. They are his gifts, because it is
under his gracious influence we are induced to repent and believe.
There can be no moral character pertaining to an act which does
not beloncr to the ajrent.
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- — ^ -♦- *
igslpnifltir ^iFologg,
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THE HOLY BIBLE,
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WITH EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES AND A
REVISION OF THE TRANSLATION
BY BISHOPS AND CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
The BIBLE COMMENTARY, the publication ol" which has been commenced, by CHARLES SCRIBNER
Jk CO. simultaneously with its appearance in England, had its origin in the widely felt want of a plain explanatory Com-
mentary on the Holy Scriptures, which should be at once more comprehensive and compact than any now published.
Projected in 1863, the selection of the scholars to be employed upon it was entrusted to a Committee named by the Speaker
of the British House of Commons and the Archbishop of York (for the 7tam.es of this Committee and list 0/ contributort
tee another page), and through the agency of this Committee, there has been concentrated upon this great work, a com-
bination of force such as has not been en'isted in any similar undertaking in England, since the translation of King James'*
version of the Bible. Of the THIRTY-SIX DIFFERENT DIVINES who are engaged upon the work, nearly all are
widely known in this country as well as in England, for their valuable and extensive contributions to the Literature of the
Bible, and in this Commentary they condense their varied learning and their most matured judgmenls.
The great object of the BIBLE COMMENTARY is to put every general reader and student in full possession tA
whatever information may be necessary to enable him to understand the Holy Scriptures ; to give him, as far as possib'e,
the same advantages as the Scholar, and to supply him with satisfactory answers to objections resting upon misrepresenta
tions or misinterpretations of the text. To secure this end raost effectually, the Comment is chiefly explanatory, presentmg
in a concise and readable form the results of learned investigations carried on during the last half century. Wlien fuller
discussions of difficult passages or important subjects are necessary, they are placed at the end of the chapter or volume.
TiiS text is reprinted without alteration, from the Authorized Version of 161 1 with marginal references and renderings :
but the notes forming this Commentary, will embody amended translations of passages proved to be incorrect in that Version.
The work will be divided into EIGHT SECTIONS which it is expected will be comprised in as many volumes, and
each volume will be a royal octavo. Typographically special pains has been taken to adapt the work to the use of older
readers and students.
N. B. The American edition of the Bible Commentary, will be printed from stereo-
type plates, duplicated from those upon which the English edition is printed, and will be
fully equal to that in every respect.
THE FIRST VOLUME OF
^^p PiMp (Jommpnl^eFB
IS NOW READY, IT CONTAINS
THE PENTATEUCH,
The books of which are divl'led as follows, among the contributors named ;
_p-.p„.„ ( Rt. Rev. E. Harold Browne, Bishop of Ely, and
I author of Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles.
EXODUS Chap. I-XIX. The Editor.
" Chap. XX. to the End, and
LEVITICUS Rev. Samuel Clark, M. A.
NUMBERS AND DEUTERONOMY.] ^^^,;J- Sv^^^giam!^-^".^'^'^'' of Queen'. Col-
Making one vol. royal 8vo, of nearly looo pages, being the only complete Commen-
tary upon the Pentateuch, in one volume, in the English language. Price in cloth, $5.00,
Jess than one-half that of the English edition.
OHAELES SOKIBNEE & CO., 654 Broadway, ^^w YorJ*
TW^O NEV\^ VOLUMES OF
■ — * — •
Messrs. Charles Scribner & Co.
flAVE THE GRATIFICATION OF ANNOUNCING THE PUBLICATION OF THR
LONG ANTICIPATED COMMENTARY UPON
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN,
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
Eev. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., assisted by E. R. CRAVEN, D*.D., and the late E. D. YEOMANS, D.D
One \loi 5m, 650 pages, cloth. $5.00.
This volume will universally be regarded as the Commentary of Commentaries upon the " Gospel of Gospels." It
gathers up the results of the latest research, and is, besides, enriched with the fruits of the original labors of some of the
first living Biblical Scholars. Completing the Gospels, it worthily finishes an important section of what is universally re-
garded as the most important Biblical enterprise of the age.
ALSO, JUST PUBLISHED:
JEREMIAH.
Translated and edited by Rev. C. R. Asburv, of Andover, Mass.
LAMENTATIONS.
Translated and edited by Rev. Dr. Hornblower, of Paterson, N. J. Under the general editorship of Rev. Dr. ScHAFit.
One vol. royal 8vo., cloth Ss oo
The TEN VOLUMES previously issued are in the
OLD TESTAMENT.
1.— GENESIS. II.— PROVERBS, SONG OF SOLOMON, ECCLESIASTES.
NEW TESTAMENT.
I. -MATTHEW. II.— MARK AND LUKE. III.— ACTS. IV.— THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE
ROMANS, v.— CORINTHIANS. VI.— THESSALONIANS, TIMOTHY, TITUS, PHILEMON,
AND HEBREWS. VII.— GALATIANS, EPHESIANS, PHILIPPIANS, COLOSSIANS.
VIII.— THE EPISTLES GENERAL OF JAMES, PETER, JOHN, AND JUDE.
Each one vol. 8vo. Price per vol., in half calf, $7.50 ; in sheep, $6.50 ; in cloth, #s-"o-
NAMES AND DENOMINATIONS OF CONTRIBUTORS:
W. G. T. SHEDD, D.D., Presbyterian. E. D. YEOMANS, D.D., Presbyterian.
E. A. WASHBURNE, D.D., Episcopal. Rev. C. C. STARBUCK, Congregational.
A. C. KENDRICK, D.D., Baptist. J. ISIDOR MOMBERT, D.D., Episcopal.
W. H. GREEN, D.D., Presbyterian. D. W. POOR, D.D., Presbyterian.
J. F. HURST, D.D., Methodist. C. P. WING, D.D., Presbyteri.in.
TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D., Dutch Reformed. GEORGE E. DAY, D.D., Congregational.
Rev. CH. F. SCHAFFER, Lutheran. Rev. P. H. S". CENSTRA, Episcopal.
R. D. HITCHCOCK, D.D., Presbyterian. A. GOSMAN, D.D., Presbyterian.
E. HARWOOD, D.D., Episcopal. Pres't CHARLES A. AIKEN, D.D., Presbyterian.
H. B. HACKETT. D.D., Baptist. M. B. RIDDLE, D.D., Dutch Reformed.
JOHN LILLIE, D.D.,|>resbyterian. Prof. WILLIAM WELLS, D.D., Methodist.
Rev. W. G. SUMNER, Episcopal. W^. H. HORNBLOWER, D.D., Presbyterian.
^^ Each volume of" LANGE'S COMMENTARY '' is complete in itself, and can be purchased separately. Se»'
post- paid to any address upon receipt, of the price ($5 per volume) by the publishers.
CHAELES SORIBNER & CO., 654 Broadway, N. Y.
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